Flames, Ashes, Rebirth
by auroraraye
Summary: The Phoenix Saga enters a new generation. The world's greatest story on the power of the human spirit is revised, packed with more violence, depression, psychosis, hatred, rage, tragedy, and overall angst!
1. Reference Page

Reference Page: THIS IS NOT THE FIRST CHAPTER!!!! This story gets sort of complex, so I created this page so that, if the time-travel part gets confusing, you could always come here. If you don't want the plot ruined for you, don't even look.  
  
06-06-06 (241): Rachel Summers is born a telepath/telekinetic with ocular blasts who can control time. She has complete control over her fully developed abilities  
  
06-06-12 (241): US government levels the X-Mansion and Rachel is the only survivor. She is put into Ahab's Hound program.  
  
05-13-21 (241): After years of physical, sexual, and psychological torture, Raye submits to apathy, and becomes the world's best Hound, killing every single mutant, except 83. Wolverine is her first assignment.  
  
12-20-23 (241): Rachel is consumed by the Phoenix Force, which frees her mind from the evils that have been suppressed upon her. She blows the Kennels to pieces and mangles Ahab's limbs. She goes crazy and destroys everything in her universe, and then takes her own life.  
  
TIMESTREAM: The Phoenix Force preserves her and sends her into the timestream. She meets Cable, an X-Man from the future who she bonds with really well. The Watchers put her on trial and decide to omit her life from the 241 timeline (she essentially has no life), but send her back for a second chance.  
  
10-24-33 (241): She's sent to the South Bronx Mutant Internment Center, where she reunites with Storm, Colossus, Kate Rasputin, Magneto, and Franklin Richards.  
  
04-11-34 (241): After speaking with Logan telepathically, Rachel and the gang plan to escape and prevent Senator Kelly's assassination, to prevent the MRA. They ruin their inhibitor collars and run away, but Franklin is killed by the Sentinels while on the run. Rachel kicked those Sentinels' butts! The team flees to the Baxter Building, former headquarters of the Fantastic Four, but are followed by more Sentinels. Everyone is killed but Rachel and Kate.  
  
04-19-34 (241): Rachel sends Kate's consciousness back in time to save Kelly, but accidentally sends her to ME, rather than their own reality. It works, but they can't figure out why nothing in their world has changed. New plan: they attack the Sentinel headquarters, but things go awry. Kate (who received some of her best bud's powers with the whole conscious-switch thing) hypnotizes Rachel to force her to tap into the Phoenix Force and get the heck out of there. Phoenix takes her back into the timestream.  
  
04-19-04 (616): Rachel is sent back 30 years to ME. When she knocks on the door, she's greeted by a 15-year old Ilyana Rasputin. She panics and runs to New York City, where she plans to try to live a normal life. There she meets a young man named Nick, who takes her to his house for some...fun. However, after she takes a bath, she goes into the kitchen to see Selene turn him to ashes! Selene, who thinks she will take over the Inner Circle, just as her mother did, tries to kill her. The X-Men come to the rescue and take Rachel back to the Mansion.  
  
04-22-04 (616): Xavier takes Rachel in. Kitty and Kurt find out who she is, and she begs them not to tell anyone, especially Scott!  
  
04-26-04 (616): Rachel finds out through Nightcrawler that her mother is dead, and her father had married Madelyn Pryor, and almost kills him in her fury. She joins the team, taking up the name Phoenix II.  
  
05-31-04, (616): Rachel has serious side-effects of time-travel, including depression and panic attacks. But, she visits her grandparents' house, and, after she touches the Shi'ar holempathic matrix crystal, created in memory of her mother, she realizes she still has the Phoenix inside her, and gets all powered up.  
  
08-25-04, (616): She goes Dark Phoenix and decides she NEEDS to kill someone, and who's better than her arch-enemy Selene? She almost kills her, but Logan intercedes, stabbing her through the heart and lungs. She abandons the X-Men, and takes a stroll through the timestream.  
  
10-01-17, (835): Rachel sees her brother's birth, and vows to protect him (and everyone in the universe) by destroying the Beyonder. She absorbs the lifeforces of every X-Man and goes to the M'Kraan Crystal, unleashes the neutron galaxy inside , creating a black hole and drawing the Beyonder's entire galaxy into it. She subsequently destroys the entire universe of that timeline.  
  
TIMESTREAM: Once again, Rachel is held under trial, and this time, the Watchers are not so patient. They banish her to a lifetime of wandering aimlessly through time, which turns out to be very depressing. She becomes very bitter. (Overall, she spends 958 years through time.)  
  
11-03-04, (616): Upon one particular time-jot, Rachel is boarded with Meggan, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Capt. Britain, under Cable's strict demands. The five live together at the Braddock Manor and become Excalibur. (She doesn't tell anyone, but Rachel is still fighting Dark Phoenix).  
  
03-29-05, (616): Jean is resurrected, Maddy finds out she's her clone, goes crazy, and becomes the Goblin Queen. Jean kills her and she and Scott decide to raise her baby, Nathan together. They get married, and Rachel attends the wedding, where Jean figures out who she is. She has the choice of staying in ME or switching places with Brian Braddock (Captain Britain), who is trapped in the timestream. She chooses to save him, thinking that this will mean another thousand years of aimless wandering.  
  
TIMESTREAM: To her utter surprise, the Watchers tell her that she has done many wonderful things and can return to her home timeline for a real life (though she still doesn't have a past). They also hint at her future in protecting Nathan Dayspring...without the Phoenix.  
  
10-01-4067, (241): The Asakani timeline is actually her home timeline. It is the Dark Age of mutants, dominated by Apocalypse. Rachel finds a tiny group of soldier mutants, called the Clan Asakani, and becomes their leader, Mother Asakani. She becomes especially close to Sanctity, the daughter of Bolivar Trask, who created the Sentinels, and becomes like a mother to her. The Asakani fight the Dark Sisterhood, and their Dark Mother, and eventually destroy them.  
  
02-11-4130, (241): She builds the occult-like clan into a sisterhood of thousands, and tries numerous times to kill Apocalypse, but never succeeds. In ME, Apocalypse infects Nathan (the Chosen One) with the techno-organic virus, and Rachel sends some of the Asakani to fetch him and bring him to this timeline. He is cloned as a safety measure, but the clone is stolen by Apocalypse and becomes Stryfe. She and the Asakani raise Nathan in a neo-religious sort of survival boot camp, making him Cable. Rachel finally finds herself happy, and severs her tie to the Phoenix Force.  
  
09-24-4149, (241): Cable grows up and Rachel's work is done. (She is now 1,057 years old, and, without the Phoenix, is finally showing her age.) She pulls Jean and Scott from ME, tells them who Cable is, and orders Nathan and his parents to kill Apocalypse in ME. Jean takes up the codename Phoenix in her honor, and she sends them back to ME, using up the last of her energy, and dies. They do actually kill Apocalypse, and everybody is very happy.  
  
TIMESTREAM: However, Rachel isn't really dead. Once again, the Phoenix Force preserved her, and she roams through time aimlessly, doing good, not in her physical form, but simply a part of the Phoenix. 


	2. Dream World in Flames

DISCLAIMER: The characters you're about to read are all owned by Marvel. The song "Wait and Bleed" is property of the band Slipknot, "The End of All Things to Come" belongs to Mudvayne, and Switchfoot owns "Dare You to Move".  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm saying, up front, that, if your idea of Raye's life doesn't fit with mine, I don't want to hear about it. I've spoken to 5 Rachel experts, I've read 11 of her biographies, and I've read most of her comics. Each source says something different. Okay, enjoy!  
  
241 timeline  
  
06-06-2012  
  
Westchester, New York, United States  
  
Rachel Summers crouched in the high grass of the clearing, the lean muscles of her gangly limbs flexed in anticipation. Her golden-brown skin glistened with perspiration, as she telepathically searched the forest nearby. She saw her team captain, Bobby Drake, a 15-year old prankster with incredible charisma. He was fighting the opposing captain, his best friend, John, and huge waterfalls of fire and ice erupted between the two.  
  
A few trees away, James, who had multiplied himself into three separate people, was holding off Bobby's green-haired girlfriend, Lorna, and a boisterous Sam Gutherie. Fireworks flew into the sky far away, as Jubilee alerted her team that she had found the golden ball. Rachel was about to run over to stop her, when she saw Sam's metamorphosis sister, Paige, flying over in the form of a roaring dragon, and decided that Husk could take care of the situation.  
  
Then she spotted something that made her smirk mischievously. A tall Latino in a leather jacket was patrolling the outskirts of the forest, with her best friend, Kate Pryde, though neither of the two were looking for her team's ball. They had to be guarding their own. Rachel slid over to the region, crawling upon her knuckles and the balls of her feet for silence, as her godfather Logan had taught her.  
  
She crept past Pryde, who was obviously a lookout for her teammate, Rictor, and into a bush behind the older boy. She went into his mind, to find the location of the blue ball, but forgot to enter softly. Rictor, who felt the girl's presence, snapped his head around just in time to see her heading for the tree canopy, and set a rough vibration through the air in her direction.  
  
Rachel fell to the ground with a soft thud. She turned on him, taking hold of the part of his brain that controlled mobile skills, and commanded him to run to his other teammates. There, he involuntarily unleashed a small earthquake. Summers telepathically told her own squad to run for it, successfully delaying the other team significantly.  
  
She ran back to the tree, but was intercepted by her best friend, who Rachel herself had nicknamed Kitty for her catlike agility and speed. The two girls, who enjoyed their playful competitions immensely, clenched their fists and furrowed their brows in concentration. Rachel threw a small optic blast in Pryde's direction, simply to occupy her, and her friend made herself immaterial, so that the laser flew right through her.  
  
Of course, Rachel had expected this, and took the opportunity to go through the girl's body, right behind the blast. However, Kitty turned around quickly and grabbed her by the heel before she could get away. Rachel felt herself turn in midair, as she was lassoed the opposite way. She certainly wasn't making much progress this way.  
  
She decided to make the ball come to her instead. She telekinetically lifted it from between two branches, without looking in that direction, so that, while Kitty believed she was staring her down and thinking of what to do next, she actually levitated it directly into her hands. Both girls put their hands over their ears, as a siren bellowed from the ball.  
  
"Who won?" John shouted, still fighting with his best friend.  
  
"Raye's team!" answered Kitty, giving Rachel a congratulatory high-five.  
  
"Can I play the next round?" Rachel and Kitty turned to see a small boy with flat, blonde hair and enormous blue eyes behind a set of thick-rimmed glasses. Franklin Richards. The kid loved to tag along behind the two girls.  
  
"Well, Frankie," Kate Pryde tried to explain nicely, "you're supposed to have powers to play." She and Rachel had always been proud to be the only children allowed to play the intense teenagers' game.  
  
"Besides," said Summers rudely, "you don't have any muscles. We'd crush you."  
  
"Raye!" objected Kitty, just as the rest of the two teams joined them.  
  
"Great job, Raye," Sam complimented. "How're you guys doing?" This he said to Frankie, and Illyana Rasputin, who had just appeared beside him. The two kids smiled and waved.  
  
Just then, a hissing sound rang out from afar. A giant missile soared past the group, traveling a mile in less than a second, to an enormous mansion in the distance. The weapon crashed into the side of the building, and a cloud of smoke mushroomed into the sky. As Rachel's heart stopped, so did time, and a tidal wave of debris zoomed toward her slow enough that she could put up a telekinetic shield in defense.  
  
Unfortunately, she had forgotten her friends in her panic, and she watched the surrounding mutants become frozen with heat. As the tide reached them, it blew the 11 figures to ashes by 125-mph winds, and she screamed in horror. She found it hard to breathe, when she felt 3 psychic links die. Her mind lost the familiar smell of candy that constantly reminded her of Kitty Pryde, and the warmth of her mother's presence immediately became ice cold, while her father's faithful light sort of dwindled away. She had one link open still, but somehow, she knew it wouldn't last for long.  
  
She had to find her grandpa.  
  
* * *  
  
The soldiers shifted the large chunks of rubble until they slid down the gigantic hillside that was once Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. They resembled tiny ants scrambling over a dune, from Dr. Roderick Campbell's viewpoint, on the top of the mountain of brick. Occasionally, a yellow flag went up, and the helicopter hovering above would lower a tray for the soldier below to load a dead mutant, to be thrown into the mass grave a couple of miles away.  
  
His earpiece cackled alive, and a soldier's voice came. "What do we do if we find a live one, sir?" Campbell, who the United States government knew as Ahab, a covert operative who was assigned to "deal with the mutant problem", sighed in annoyance.  
  
"There will be none alive. Unless you can think of a mutant power that can survive a nuclear explosion, and the radiation we installed to kill the X- Gene."  
  
He began to look back to his charts, when the same voice returned. "I know, sir, but I have one here that's still breathing." He couldn't believe it.  
  
"Put up a red flag, lieutenant!" he commanded. He looked around, spotted a tiny red beacon, and ran down the hillside at a neck-breaking speed, past several curious soldiers. By the time he had reached the spot, a crowd had gathered, and he pushed his way through.  
  
Sure enough, a small girl, about six years old, with curly, bright red hair that fell to her back, lay in a fetal position, curled up against the famous Charles Xavier. And she was breathing. Ahab put his hand forth to shake her awake, but instead ran into an invisible wall.  
  
"She's got some kind of shield!" someone cried from the audience.  
  
"You idiots," Campbell said in return. "Have you never worked with mutants? She's a telekinetic." The only question is, he thought to himself, how did she put up her shield in the .03 seconds before the missile hit the building? He turned to his assistant, who had followed him down. "Get me the TK magnet. This one's a keeper." 


	3. Extinguish the Embers

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanx to Koneko Tenshi and Thanx4reading for the kind words. Just so you know, anything between these symbols: ~words~ is telepathy.  
  
241 timeline 05-13-2021 Washington, District of Colombia, United States  
  
Rachel lay upside down upon a huge, iron board, with two extensions for her arms. 3-inch nails pierced her wrists and ankles. In addition, a long chord of barbed wire was wrapped around her legs, torso, arms, and neck, pinning her even more tightly to the cross. Blood was flowing over her entire body, and what was left in her veins was quickly losing its last remnants of oxygen, as it overflowed her brain. A machine to her right said that she had 45 more seconds before she would embrace death.  
  
But Ahab wouldn't allow her such peace. He pushed a button upon the control panel, causing the barbed wire to pull itself back into three holes upon the cross. As it dragged along her entire body, its thorns ripped at her skin and muscles and slit her throat. The four nails were pulled all the way through her ankles and wrists, severing major arteries. Rachel fell to the floor in a naked heap, more blood surging from her body.  
  
She coughed and gagged with pain, and held her neck to stop the blood flow. Roderick Campbell knelt beside her, replacing her inhibitor collar around her neck, which severed the neuron that connected her brain to the X-Gene, so that she couldn't use her powers. He stood up and put his hands on his hips satisfactorily.  
  
"Are you ready to cooperate yet?" he taunted her. Rachel half-wanted to spit in the man's face, but, after 9 years of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, she no longer cared about right or wrong. She would do whatever he wanted, so long as it stopped the torture, even if that meant killing her own kind.  
  
Ahab kicked Rachel in the stomach with his steel-toe boots, and her limp body slumped over. She didn't even wince, "Answer me!" Rachel groaned out an attempt at a "yes", but he still couldn't hear her. He crouched beside her.  
  
"What did you say?"  
  
She turned over to face him and whispered, "Yes." A grin spread across the man's face, and grabbed her by the jaw.  
  
"Good bitch. I'm giving you 4 months to heal, and then you can prove yourself with your first kill. Would you like to see who it is?"  
  
Rachel didn't reply, but Campbell waved over his best telepath anyway. Black Tom Cassidy, who had always had a huge lust for the girl, came forward, and took an image from his master's mind and showed it to Rachel telepathically.  
  
She saw a familiar man with wild, black hair and piercing, midnight blue eyes. Tears of self-loathing poured from her eyes, and she turned away, but didn't refuse her assignment.  
  
* * *  
  
241 timeline 09-13-2021 Wilderness of Alberta, Canada  
  
Logan was speeding along the deserted road, transferring his weight from hip to hip to ease through each bend upon the '73 Harley-Davidson FLH that he had stolen 2 weeks ago. He had been pressing every government official he knew for information of the whereabouts of Rachel Summers for the past 4 months. Everyone he threatened insisted she had died when the X-Mansion was leveled by the US military, but he had visited the mass grave in Westchester, New York, and couldn't detect her scent among the others.  
  
In the distance, he noticed a beaten up motel, and decided to camp there for the night. He was tired, hungry, dirty, and sore, and a hot shower would do him good. He pulled into the dirt parking lot at 43 mph and came to a sharp halt, throwing dust all over the 5 cars and trucks outside.  
  
As he went into the shabby lobby to pay for a room, he passed a man in a black trench coat, which was pulled up so that the only visible part of his head were two beady eyes and a shaggy head of hair. He had a sharp-looking Doberman pincher on a leash.  
  
"That was rude," the stranger hissed toward him.  
  
"So's this," Logan retorted, flipping the man off over his shoulder without stopping. Rachel would have laughed at her godfather's typical behavior any other time, but now it strained her already-guilt laden heart.  
  
Her walker, the man in the trench coat, took off her leash, and she dropped her telepathic disguise as a dog. She looked down at herself in disgust. Three telekinetic tattoos, each a foot long, extended from around her eyes like barcodes, marking her as a hound. She was forced to wear a blood-red cat-suit, with spikes that coursed around her neck, down her front, around her waist, and along her legs from the hips to the outsides of her ankles. Her head was shaved. In this way, Ahab made sure there was no mistake as to who his hounds belonged to.  
  
She rose and walked into the lobby, making herself invisible to her mentor. Inside, Logan was standing with his hands crossed, while a teenager across the counter doodled lazily upon a pad of paper.  
  
"Would you like our customary room service meals, served hot at 7:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 6:00 PM?" The kid spoke in a drawled voice.  
  
"Yeah," answered Logan gruffly. "But you'll serve dinner at 9:00 tonight, and breakfast at 5:00 tomorrow morning."  
  
"Sorry, *sir*," the guy said with a sneer, "but dinnertime has passed, and we serve breakfast at 7:00 sharp." Logan put his hands on the dirty counter, leaning forward, and growled low. "But, for you, 9 and 5 is great."  
  
Wolverine sniffed in the air, and snapped around to face her. ~Shit!~ Rachel thought. She had forgotten to sever his connection to his enhanced senses. The man knew her scent well, and could pinpoint her from a mile away with its help.  
  
"Uh, sir, are you okay?"  
  
Logan continued to inspect the doorway where she stood, though he could see nothing. "Yeah," he finally replied. "You got a key for me or not?" He was handed a small, brass key, and stepped through the doors cautiously. Rachel immediately entered his mind and disconnected his olfactory sense, but just as she had done so, he walked backwards into the room. She released her hold, and he stepped back outside. She took away his sense again, and he walked back into the room, just to be sure. Once again, she allowed him to smell her, and, now satisfied, he went outside.  
  
Rachel blocked out his hearing altogether so that he couldn't hear her open the door and follow him, and made sure to cover her scent while she was at it. He opened room 7, and she squeezed in behind him. He spun around, feeling her presence upon the back of his neck, and sighed when he saw nothing there.  
  
"Get a grip, old man," he told himself. "You're becoming paranoid." He threw his leather jacket upon the floor, lifted a thin shirt over his head, and began unfastening his belt. Rachel covered her eyes, and waited until she heard the water running before she took in the shabby room.  
  
Twin-sized bed with worn sheets. Thick, brown carpet that was developing mildew. A wobbly nightstand with a lamp. Sofa that smelled like cigarettes. Water damaged ceiling. This was to be her precious Logan's resting place? She crouched in the corner of the room. She knew he was taking a cold shower, as always, so she wouldn't have to wait long.  
  
And she was right. After only 4 minutes, Logan came out of the tiny bathroom in his jeans and lied upon his back on the hard mattress. Rachel wanted to make her first kill quick and painless. However, as the infamous Wolverine couldn't die, due to an incredible healing power, she would have to kill him in his mind rather than dispose of his body, a process that couldn't include mercy.  
  
As she enclosed his consciousness in an airtight cage, Logan's body jolted in surprise. She pressed the walls together, tighter, tighter, tighter, trying to ignore the painful screams ringing through her ears.  
  
When she had first been placed in Ahab's care, she had a fire of hope that those loyal to the X-Men would come to save her. Eventually, Logan became her only remaining ember of chance for the life she had once lived. She was now extinguishing that weak ember, and she knew she would never truly be Rachel Summers again. From this point on, she wasn't the beloved mascot of the X-Mansion, nor the miracle child of Cyclops and Phoenix. She was the Hound, trained executioner of her own kind. 


	4. Surrender to Apathy

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanx Koneko Tenshi and Thanx4reading for your words of encouragement. I'm hoping that the chapters get exponentially better, so stick around for more. ;) Anything between these symbols: ^words^ is a flashback. And the term "bloodlust" here doesn't refer to the acquired taste for blood but rather the addiction to the kill.  
  
241 timeline 12-20-2023 Washington, District of Colombia, United States  
  
Isolation. She was locked in isolation. She could handle the torture. She could handle the rape. She could handle starvation. But the one thing that destroyed the Hound's resolve was isolation. She paced the wall of her cell opposite the door, corner to corner, thinking, contemplating, plotting, scheming. She had to kill.  
  
The Hound had quickly become Ahab's best subject, and his pet. She had murdered more mutants in 2 years than the top 3 hounds before her combined in their entire careers, and, with Xavier and her mother dead, she was easily the strongest telepath in the world, which made tracking down her assignments no harder than a snap of the fingers. But something happened that her master hadn't expected.  
  
The Hound developed a bloodlust, which grew stronger with every kill she made. It was so severe that, if she went more than 3 days without an assignment, she would murder her walker and fellow hounds, despite frequent attempts to brainwash her against the habit. She would then be locked in isolation for as long as a week. Without any way to release the adrenaline in her body, she would slowly lose her sanity, until the promise of another assignment came to her.  
  
This was her present fate. Waiting for an assignment; waiting and losing touch with reality. She heard whispers and saw images that she knew weren't a result of her telepathy, as she was bound to an inhibitor collar when stationed at the Kennels. She often drifted into flashbacks of her previous life, as Rachel Summers.  
  
^Raye!^  
  
She snapped her head around with a start. Before her stood a 6-year old girl with short, brown hair and a big smile, lacking of a front tooth. She looked up at her without fear, and put forth her hand eagerly. "Let's go play." The Hound shunned away from her, curling into the corner, willing the stupid girl to leave her alone.  
  
^What's the matter, Raye?^ asked the girl. ^Don't you remember me? It's Kitty. Come on, I'm your best friend. Don't you wanna play X-Men with the other kids?^ The Hound snarled at the child, but she was still fearless. ^I'm gonna be Storm, and I'll fly-WOOSH-like that, and make thunder and lightning-BOOM, BOOM!-like that. And Alex says he wants to be Gambit. He thinks he can speak French, but all that comes out is 'Phsvoo poo tranchi, mon ami'.^  
  
She put her hand over her mouth to giggle a bit, but stopped with a worried look when she saw that her friend wasn't responding to her. ^Rachel? Don't you wanna play Phoenix? C'mon, you *always* wanna be Phoenix.^  
  
The Hound was bombarded with visions of the legendary Phoenix Force, an all- knowing, all-powerful cosmic entity that had inhabited her mother years ago, and had since sworn to protect the Summers family. She threw her head to the sky.  
  
"WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!?" She must have screamed harder than she meant to, because the walls shook with the echo of her cry.  
  
^That's the spirit!^ Kitty piped up, to her great annoyance. ^But, just so you know,^ she lowered her voice to a whisper, ^Frankie wants to play Cyclops, so you might have to kiss him.^ The Hound turned to punch the child, but there was nothing there; just an echo of a little girl's laugh.  
  
Rachel suddenly noticed that the ground beneath her knees was rumbling. She heard a rolling quake, growing louder as it approached, until in encompassed the Kennels, and became an explosion of noise. Somewhere within that noise, she heard a shriek, like a screeching eagle.  
  
The door of her cell burst open with a crack, and a blinding light flooded the room, hurting her eyes. White flames poured through the tiny chamber. The fire decreased dramatically, taking the form of a bird of prey, hovering before her with an aura of divine beauty and wisdom.  
  
~Rachel Summers.~ The Hound recognized the voice of her mother, and wondered if she was somehow contained inside the small bird, watching her. ~I have come to take you from this place, not out of my own discretion but because you have called upon me. I answer your beckoning out of respect to an oath I made centuries ago. I must warn you, however, that my aid will not restore your life, for your illness stems not from your trials but from your tribulations, which will follow you through whatever circumstances, if left to grow. With these words in mind, do you still desire to become my host?~  
  
The Hound, who was desperate to leave this hell, despite the misgivings the creature's words gave her, nodded vehemently, and the bird entered her body. In a split second, her senses of sight, hearing, and smell extended from a minuscule dimension to the entire universe. She could taste the emotions of life forms 100's of galaxies away. She could feel the very seconds of the life stories of each individual, past, present, and future, throughout time coursing through her body. She not only had power; she *was* power.  
  
But the Phoenix was right. Her newfound capabilities didn't mitigate the rage and hatred that burned through her countenance. She still yearned for blood, and she suddenly realized that she could have the ecstasy of the kill to the infinite degree. She flew out of her cell, through the maze of the Kennels, past thousands of hounds, until she came to a large, glass building in the center.  
  
She sent a pulse of electromagnetic energy through the air, breaking the 2- inch thick glass, and killing every employee inside. There would still be one human left within that building. She flew through the destruction to the inside corridors, where she found an office made entirely of titanium- alloy. She raised the atmospheric temperature within a foot radius to 600°C, melting the door before her.  
  
When she stepped into the room, Campbell was pressed against the opposite wall, his eyes wide with shock and horror. "What do you want?" he asked her shakily.  
  
"You don't remember me?" she taunted. "I'm shocked. I thought I was your pet." She feigned disappointment.  
  
"You." The shock on his face dissipated into utter fear. "Please, you have to understand-" She stopped him short by grasping hold of his body. She could sensse every particle of every molecule of every cell of every vein and muscle and bone and organ in the man. She slowly, and very painfully, began to move, mismatch, and transform the particles that made up his body. Vital minerals in his digestive system became hardened metals. His blood lost all its oxygen. Some of his tendons and ligaments became embedded into his brain, eyes, and lungs.  
  
The man screamed, partly out of the horror of seeing his body deteriorate before him, and partly out of the torture of unfathomable maim. But the Hound's lust only intensified through his pain. 


	5. Freaky Little People With Huge Heads

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks, Koneko Tenshi, for the review. Sorry if this chapter is slightly boring, but I had to explain a few things. Oh, and just so you know, the Watchers are a super-race of beings that are all- knowing and all-powerful, sorta like the Marvel universe's gods. But, unlike the Phoenix Force, they very seldom interfere (thus the name; they just watch).  
  
Timestream  
  
Rachel's head was a blur of intensely bright light and voices screaming into her ears. It was as if she was having a terrible hangover. She peeled her eyelids open and looked around her to find that she was in some sort of a laboratory, made entirely of a clear, indestructible metal, and she herself was lying upon an examining table. As she groaned in pain, a midget came waddling toward her. His disproportionately large head wobbled from side to side for balance. Rachel's instincts told her to kill the midget silently and swiftly, and try to escape the lab through stealth, but the thought soon disseminated, and she felt inexplicably secure in his presence.  
  
"Where the hell am I?" she asked him, her voice groggy, as if she hadn't used it in years.  
  
~There is no such thing as geography here,~ he responded with a humming voice, though she noticed his lips hadn't moved. He was telepathic.  
  
~Okaaay,~ she drawled. ~How long was I asleep?~  
  
~There is no such thing as time here.~  
  
~And 'here' is, what, Hell? Am I dead?~  
  
~There is no such thing as death for the Phoenix. Nor life, really.~  
  
"You're in the time-stream, and you've been in a catatonic state for 3 weeks," came a booming voice from behind her. She swung around to see a 6'1" man walking toward her, wearing skintight, black jeans and a gray tank top. Rachel immediately distrusted the man, as he looked like a cross between a trained serial killer and a ridiculous professional wrestler.  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"My name is Na-" he stammered for a second. "-er-Cable. I'm an X-Man from the future."  
  
"Hate to break it to you, 'Naercable', but the X-Men don't exist anymore."  
  
"Well, not in your timeline, no."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Look, that's not why you're here. Focus, with me kid, okay?"  
  
"Don't call me a kid. I've probably seen more than you have."  
  
"In another few hundred years or so, yeah, but, as of right now, I've still got the lead on you."  
  
"What the fuck are you on?!"  
  
* * *  
  
Cable turned out to be a decent person, who seemed to genuinely want to help her. Though the thought of a person being sincerely kind to her, without wanting any kind of payment, made her very nervous, this was the first time in 11 years that she could remember not searching for an escape route every minute or so. Still, Rachel found it hard to believe a word he was saying.  
  
"Okay, okay," she tried to recap. "After the Phoenix inhabited me, I blew the Kennels into pieces and tore Ahab limb from limb."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"I then destroyed the entire universe and tore myself up limb from limb."  
  
"Right."  
  
"And the Phoenix Force kept me alive-somehow-and the Watchers, freaky little people with huge heads, called me here to be judged."  
  
"Just remember that those freaky little people *allow* you to exist, if nothing else for pure entertainment."  
  
"So," she said apprehensively, half-afraid of the answer to the question boring through her head, "I'm being judged on the lives I took as a Hound." Cable nodded solemnly. "What happens if they find me guilty?"  
  
"Wow," he stated, blinking. "The million-dollar question. Honestly, I don't know. I wish I could put it more gently, but the fact of the matter is I don't. I seriously doubt the Watchers would kill you. Of course, they don't quite understand that sometimes their punishments are worse than death, but..." He trailed, suddenly realizing how uncomforting his words must have been. "Sorry."  
  
Rachel smiled meekly. "Why are you being so nice to me?"  
  
His eyes watered slightly before he blinked the beginnings of tears away. "Nothing I could ever do would be even the tiniest payment to what you've done for me."  
  
"I've never even met you!" She pulled away shortly, feeling very uncomfortable with his irrational emotional connection.  
  
"Have Mom and Dad ever spoken to you about time travel?"  
  
"Whose mom and dad? Wait, time travel? Like, in Star Trek or something?"  
  
"Oh, boy." He wiped his face in preparation. "I'm gonna try to explain this, but it's very confusing. Just try to stick with me, okay?" She raised her eyebrows, prepared herself, and nodded quickly. He put out an enormous forearm, as thick as her head. "Imagine this as a timeline of the world the way it's supposed to turn out."  
  
She interrupted. "'Supposed to turn out', according to whom?"  
  
"No one's really sure, but I suspect the Watchers, or some other high celestial beings. Anyway, time travel is invented and people go back in time to change things according to their will. Well, not every change is a good one, and, when a change takes place that goes against the big scheme of things, a new timeline is created, from the moment that event occurs." He put his other hand upon his forearm, stemming out of its midpoint. "After hundreds of years of time travel, you soon have a web of timelines that all coexist together. This is called the time-stream. The physical embodiment of this reality is what you now see."  
  
Rachel looked around. She was in a room, with hundreds of big-headed midgets, that looked out upon a view of hundreds of stars.  
  
"Looks like outer space to me," she said blankly.  
  
"Yes, but those lights you see aren't galaxies but timelines. See that really bright one, way over there?" She nodded, spotting a large, jade green star that had several tiny planet-like masses revolving around it. "That's the 616 timeline, also called Mainstream Earth. It's the central core of how the universe is supposed to exist. You come from the 241 timeline, right there." Her gaze followed his pointed finger to a much smaller, bright pink light, with many gold, swirling ribbons encasing it.  
  
~Rachel Summers.~ She turned to the source of the commanding voice, a Watcher with a purple robe that indicated he was of higher stature than those around him, who wore white. He turned and walked to a gigantic door that opened upon his silent command. She followed sheepishly.  
  
* * *  
  
Rachel knelt upon the ground, beneath a bright spotlight, looking out upon a board of Watchers in violet robes. The 9 sat, staring intently at her for nearly an hour, saying nothing, though they were obviously communicating with means she couldn't detect. Finally, the Watcher in the center rose, waving for her to stand as well.  
  
~Your life will be omitted from the 241 timeline,~ he told her, with an utterly emotionless voice. ~From this point on, you have no past; no one will remember you, for you will not have ever passed into existence. You will, however, return to your timeline, and continue to live in a world devoid of your mass murder. We will be monitoring your progress...or lack there of.~  
  
She didn't quite understand how she could live if she had never been born, but she did know that she was looking at a lifetime of loneliness and rejection. Her heart slumped, but she made a slight bow to the Watchers to thank them for their time and just ruling. She tried to grasp the depth of her judge's words. "You will not have passed into existence." She was now nothing more than a figment of her own imagination, but she had been given a second chance to make a life for herself.  
  
Suddenly, the fiery embodiment of the Phoenix burst through the door, encompassing her, and flew out of the compound. Rachel didn't have time to say goodbye to Cable, whom she hoped to meet again someday. She soared straight through the thick, clear metal of the lobby and into the pink light of the 241 timeline. She felt strangely dizzy and disoriented, and she soon passed out. 


	6. Everything is Perfect

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you, Thanx4reading and koneko tenshi for the reviews. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update, but I've found it's harder to write when I'm happy. (Don't blame me; it's my boyfriend's fault. jk)  
  
241 timeline 10-24-2033 Bronx, New York, United States  
  
When she came to, she was lying upon the ground, mud caking her face. She got up abruptly and attempted to use her telekinesis to separate the mineral particles from her cheek, but was surprised when she received no response from her own powers. She looked down, to see an inhibitor collar around her neck.  
  
Looking up, she noticed for the first time the bars before her. She was in a cage. Looking out through the steel rods, she saw several similar cages, filled with some 56 creatures. Most looked like normal human beings, though several had green skin, horns, a tail, or exceptionally long limbs, and every one of them wore an inhibitor collar. ~Mutants~, she thought to herself. ~Of course. I was never born, so the mutant race still exists. It's funny though, I leave a life of imprisonment and torture only to be captured again.~  
  
She finally wiped off the muck with the back of her hand. "I'm getting tired of this shit," she mumbled to herself.  
  
"As we all are, I assure you." She spun around, automatically taking a defensive stance. Before her were five mutants. She saw a black woman with long locks of shining white hair and crystal-blue eyes. ~Storm~ she reminded herself. A tall man with short, black hair tried to smile behind a set jaw. ~Aw, yes. Colossus.~ An elderly man, whose only show for his age was his white hair, nodded to her in recognition. ~Magneto. Great.~ A girl her age, with curly brown hair that fell to her shoulders, said sweetly, "Hi. How are you feeling?"  
  
"Kitty!" Rachel heard herself say. "It's been so long!"  
  
But her best friend looked back at her, confused. "I'm sorry, miss, you must have hit your head or something. My name's Kate Rasputin, and we've never met...Or have we?"  
  
"No," Summers said, remembering. "We haven't. My name is Rachel."  
  
"I am Ororo Munroe," Storm told her.  
  
"I know. And you're Pitor Rasputin, and Eric Leshner, and..." she stopped, coming to a man a little older than her, with thick waves of blonde hair, and blue eyes that somehow revealed a bravery similar to that of her father.  
  
"My name's Franklin Richards," he improvised.  
  
"Oh," she started, without thinking. "Wow, you've grown up." He looked to her questioningly, and she added, "Aren't you Sue and Reed Richards' son? I saw you on tv a lot, and you look very...different."  
  
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" he asked.  
  
She sighed. "Look, I'm not even supposed to be here, I mean, why would I be sent back to captivity? After all I've worked for? As *more* punishment?"  
  
Colossus leaned over to whisper in Storm's ear. "She must have hit her head pretty hard. She is talking to herself."  
  
* * *  
  
241 timeline 04-11-2034 Bronx, New York, United States  
  
Rachel's waist-long hair whipped her face she danced upon the currents of the wind. She did a pirouette, spinning briefly, dove as low as she could, and then shot back up to the sky. The whole time, Franklin Richards followed, just behind her toes, until he finally gained a lead on her. He grasped her around the waist and pulled down. The two slowly glided to the ground, embracing each other and laughing like two children. As her chuckles gradually subsided, Rachel looked into her lover's warm eyes, to see that his grin had become a very serious smile.  
  
"What's wrong, my love?" she asked.  
  
"Nothing. Everything is perfect." He leaned forward and kissed her lips firmly.  
  
"Rachel? Franklin? Hello! Are you two having a staring contest or something?" The two were jolted out of their physic illusion. Rachel's hair had become short again, and the two were wearing inhibitor collars. They rolled their eyes to Kate Rasputin, who was giving them a curious look. "You know, this is the third time you two have just zoned out in the middle of an" she dropped her voice to a whisper, "important meeting" and it rose again, "in like, two weeks! What's wrong with you guys?"  
  
"Nothing," Rachel answered. "Everything is perfect." She curled into Franklin's chest, and he wrapped his arms around her. The group reflected Kate's exasperated sigh in their tired eyes, and Magneto continued what he was saying.  
  
"I miss Charles greatly," he stated, and everyone listened intently to catch his code-talk. Anytime someone spoke about Xavier, they were actually referring to their plan to escape the South Bronx Mutant Internment Center. "I remember we used to debate for hours over foreign affairs...That was years before any of you came to the Mansion of course. What year did you get there, Rachel?" He used the word "remember", telling the team that he wanted to speak to Logan, and he turned toward Rachel to ask her when she last spoke to him.  
  
For reasons unknown to anyone in the tiny cage, Rachel's genetic abilities, though dormant for her first few weeks at the interment camp, had redeveloped exponentially in the last 6 months. Her inhibitor collar now had no effect upon her at all. Though her vivid telekinetic tattoos made it quite clear to her cellmates that Rachel was once a hound, they grew to trust her quickly, and used her advantage to contact their old teammate, Wolverine, and plan an escape with his help. Today was the big day that they hoped would bring them, and every other mutant in South Bronx, freedom.  
  
"Just before I was captured," she said, translating into "recently". "I had only stayed 10 hours before the Sentinels got me." So Logan would arrive at 10. Magneto's eyes grew wide.  
  
"Why hadn't you told us this earlier?" he snapped. "It is 10:26 right now!"  
  
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a SNIKT sound sliced through the air behind them, and Logan tore through the chain-link as if it were paper. He gave Kate and Ororo small hugs, and Rachel had to remind herself that he had never met her before, in order to resist kissing him with glee. Two of the claws on his right hand retracted into his forearm, and he quickly destroyed Eric Leshner's inhibitor collar.  
  
The old man came alive once more, throwing open every cage within the camp and ripping apart every inhibitor collar in less than 3 seconds. Cheers erupted all around, and mutants began flying in the air, fighting soldiers with explosions of plasma, telekinesis, water, and every other imaginable source of energy. But the 7 mutants in Magneto's cell didn't have time to fight; they had to run for it.  
  
Leshner pushed off from the ground and used his magnetic force to propel himself from the minerals in the earth, taking a now-transformed Colossus with him. Storm summoned an enormous gust of wind that carried Kate, Logan, and herself into the air, while Franklin and Rachel flew telekinetically, holding hands. Their triumph was short-lived, however, when, only 2 miles from the camp, they were met by a squad of 17 Sentinels.  
  
"Let's show these tin cans what X-Men are made of!" shouted Logan. Rachel smiled at his familiar (though corny) line, and rose higher into the air to come face-to-face with one of the gigantic robots. 


	7. What X Men Are Made Of

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you, Thanx4reading and koneko tenshi for the excellent reviews. You rock! By the way, the part where Rachel gets pissed and has memory gaps is important. It'll come into play later.  
  
241 timeline 04-11-2034 Bronx, New York, United States  
  
As corny as Wolverine's cry had been, there truly was no better representation of the training they received in the Danger Room than the skill the X-Men demonstrated that day. If Rachel had time to stop and look around, she would have been proud.  
  
Magneto was holding back 4 Sentinels effortlessly, and dissembling them into heads and limbs. Nearby, Wolverine was distracting one of the massive robots, while Ororo guided Kate upward with a wind current, so that she landed upon its shoulders. The girl plunged her hand forward and her forearm disappeared into its framework, searching for control panels.  
  
"Any time you wanna work yur magic, Kate," Logan grunted between back- handsprings that barely escaped thick blasts of plasma.  
  
Kate pulled her hand out, shimmied to the right, and phased through the metal again. "Well, if you'd stop jumping around so much, this thing'd stop moving so much, and it'd make my job a whole lot easier." As if obeying her wishes, the android froze in the middle of a lunge for the acrobatic mutant. Kate and Logan turned to see Franklin smiling at them, his hands extended forward, holding the Sentinel still by pure TK. Kate made a final phase with her arm, and sparks flew from the back of the robot. She leapt off its neck and was caught by Wolverine, just as it self- destructed.  
  
Summers and Rasputin were standing back-to-back, surrounded by 5 Sentinels. Colossus ran forward, grabbing the closest one by the ankle, and lassoed the mammoth in 3 complete circles, before letting it loose, so that it collided with 1 of its clones, and the 2 flew into pieces. Rachel's ears exploded with a crack of thunder, as Storm electrocuted 4 Sentinels with a single, enormous bolt of lightning far away.  
  
She turned to her own attackers. 3 of the red machines came forward, and she flew high above to avoid them, but they simply rounded their charge upward and followed her into the clouds. She stopped and, when the first to tail her became visible, pelted it straight through the stomach with an optic blast. The laser severed the machine into 2 pieces, exiting to bore into the skull of the next. Unfortunately, it didn't do any collateral damage, and the second Sentinel continued its sprint toward her.  
  
Rachel encased herself with an invisible shield, and the robot flew straight into her TK, exploding upon impact. While she knew that her telekinetic abilities would withstand the blow, she was amazed to find that it didn't hurt at all, but she didn't have time to think about this phenomenon, as she had 1 more Sentinel to get rid of before she went down to help her friends.  
  
The intelligent machine, which had seen her skill with telekinesis, fired a missile at her, hoping to blast through her barrier. But Rachel bravely dropped the shield entirely. She slowed time to a standstill, turned the missile around, and shot it straight at its owner. The robot tried to swerve, but couldn't escape a heat-sensor in a single second.  
  
Just as the parts of the Sentinel rained down toward the earth, a shout rang out from below. "Franklin!!!!!" Rachel felt something that made her mind flood with terrible memories of her dream world in flames. ~No!~ she screamed telepathically. ~I can't do this again!!~ Her psychic link with Franklin Richards was still open, but it was no more than a mile-long thread in a desert.  
  
She soared down to the rest of the group, where she saw Kate crying over Richards' body, despite the fray that continued around her. She knelt beside her lover, placing his head in her lap, and tried to comfort him by unleashing a chemical reminiscent to morphine in his brain to ensure that he wasn't in pain. He opened his eyes and turned his head toward her, moving his mouth to speak, but no words came out.  
  
~It's okay,~ she told him. ~I'm right here in your mind, so you don't have to worry about talking. Don't waste your energy.~  
  
~Rachel!~ came his voice, faltering with emotion. ~Rachel, I love you so much. I want you to always remember that, no matter where you go.~  
  
~I'm not going anywhere without you.~  
  
~Yes, you will,~ he reassured her. ~You're destined for great things. You will become a legend, my love.~  
  
~Frankie,~ she practically whispered, ~it can't end like this. Not after we finally got free. We can make a life together now, don't you see?~  
  
~No. My story is done. And it had the perfect ending. You and the others are free, and now you can be the X-Men once more. You can give rebirth to the Dream, my love. It's perfect.~ Rachel tried to rebuke his words, but she couldn't think straight through her weeping. ~Everything is perfect, so perfect.~  
  
And with that, his mind flickered for a few seconds, just like her father, and finally became unbearably dark. Rachel felt the rage of her years as the Hound filling her psyche, and, had she been in a good state of mind, she would have been worried that she was about to lose control again, but at the moment, she didn't care. She was glad that Richards died happily and with a peace of heart, but her own was seeping with grief. Her fists clenched, and she felt as if she was crushing the entire world in her hands, as she screamed into the sky in vain.  
  
* * *  
  
"Rachel," Ororo said softly, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Come, child. We have been here for almost an hour. We have to move if we do not want to lose any more among us."  
  
Summers didn't see how she could have possibly stayed with her lover's body for more than a fleeting moment, but she didn't argue. She felt strangely exhausted, and required help getting up from the ground. When she looked down, she was surprised to find that she wasn't looking into Franklin's eyes, but at his grave, complete with a small cross of woven sticks, which Kate had made.  
  
* * *  
  
The Baxter Building was stationed a mere 7 miles from SBMIC, and the 6 mutants walked along the New York streets in silence until they reached the abandoned skyscraper. Colossus wasted no effort bursting through the front door, and the group split into 3 groups to familiarize themselves with the new building.  
  
It had been Franklin's idea to use the place as their new station of operations, as the X-Mansion had been torched. It was once the headquarters of the Fantastic Four, his parents' own crime-fighting mutant league, but had been unused for nearly 2 decades, as the team had divided when Reed and Sue Richards both died. With this in mind, everyone was very somber with memories of their fallen comrade.  
  
"You okay, Rachel?" asked Kate, as she turned on the lights in the Conference Room. Rachel nodded, though both girls knew she was far from emotionally stable. "Because I'm always here if you want to talk."  
  
"I know, Kitty," Rachel said with a sigh. "And thanks, but I'm just really not there yet."  
  
"Fuck."  
  
Rachel looked to her friend, shocked, as she had never heard her swear before. "I mean, I will be, eventually, but it's just kinda hard right now- "  
  
"Not that." Kate pointed over Rachel's shoulder. Several security cameras displayed Sentinels landing upon the roof.  
  
Rachel's mouth fell open. "This can't be happening." 


	8. No Tears Left

AUTHOR'S NOTE: To Tenshi and Thanx4reading, you two have no idea how much you entertain me. You're awesome. By the way, the reason nothing changes will be explained in another couple of chapters, and the memory gaps I spoke of earlier will come into play in another four or five.  
  
241 timeline 04-11-2034 Manhattan, New York, United States  
  
Rachel didn't cry as she held Logan's hand in her left and Ororo's in her right; she didn't have any more tears left in her body. But she was grieving just the same. Kate had curled up next to Piotr, and was sobbing heavily against the man's stomach. Rachel comforted her telepathically with soothing waves of relaxing endorphins, but they didn't ease the girl's suffering. After more than a half an hour, however, the tears became silent, and Kate Rasputin seemed to be in a peaceful slumber, despite the emotions raging through her.  
  
"What do we do now?" she asked through a swallow of saliva.  
  
"We give rebirth to the Dream," came Summers' reply. "It was Franklin's last wish, and it was what they all would have wanted."  
  
"Yeah," Kate agreed.  
  
Rachel couldn't help but think of the days, many years ago, as a carefree child, when she and Kitty had been the only children strong enough to play the "grown up games". Though they were both very proud of their prepubescent powers, it had earned them a lot of jealousy and spite from the other kids. ~How ironic,~ she thought to herself, ~that after all these years, we're still isolated together.~  
  
Though each of their friends had fought bravely, the battle had outlasted the endurance of any mortal. Only Kate, who couldn't be touched due to her phasing abilities, and Rachel, whose TK shield kept her from harm, had survived. It would be another 8 days before they would be able to revenge their loved ones' deaths.  
  
* * *  
  
241 timeline 04-19-2034 Manhattan, New York, United States  
  
Rachel's palms were sweating so bad that she had to carry a towel in her hands. At this point, she was beyond nervous. Her time-manipulating abilities had always been the weakest of her 3 powers as a child, partly because she had only used them 5 times in 17 years. This plan would either be a god-sent miracle or a suicide mission, and Kate didn't seem to care which it turned out to be. Rachel, on the other hand, had lost her parents, her grandpa, her closest friends, her godfather (twice), her surrogate aunt, and her own team of X-Men in less than 2 decades. She couldn't stand to lose her best friend again.  
  
"You ready?" Kate called over her shoulder.  
  
"Let's go over the plan one more-"  
  
"Rachel, we've done this a thousand times!"  
  
"One more time."  
  
"Fine," she consented. "You're going to telepathically duplicate my consciousness. Then, you'll send my consciousness back to the year 2022, when I was 18. I will alert the X-Men of the situation in the future if Senator Kelly is assassinated and the MRA is passed. Then, we'll head to the Sentinels headquarters, where Kelly is killed, and make sure the man lives. After we save his life, the huge, commanding push for the MRA will be eliminated, because the American people won't have their bloody shirt to wave."  
  
Rachel nodded. "It hasn't changed after re-planning for the fiftieth time, and I guess it won't change now. Are you ready for this?" Kate gave a single positive nod, and Summers motioned to a chair. "Sit down and get comfortable."  
  
Kate relaxed considerably, and Rachel entered her mind, deep into the woman's subconscious. She felt alienated being in this strange place, where her whole viewpoint of life had changed to that of her friend, far more laidback and easygoing than her own. Yet, at the moment, the "take life as it comes to you" attitude was clouded with shadows of grief and vengeance.  
  
She came out of Kate's psyche, and shuddered at the lifeless look her friend had taken, now that her body was living but devoid of a true mind. She centered her thoughts upon the time continuum, and stopped it altogether. She, slowly at first, began to digress, and watched the digital clock on the wall go from 0912 to 0910 to 0901, until things began to unravel around her. She went farther back, faster and faster, until months flew past her in seconds. People moved in and out of the room at a terrifying speed, not noticing her presence, and finally, somehow, she knew to stop. The clock read 0912 again.  
  
She flew with her TK for a good 128 miles, to Westchester, where she soon found the only 2 buildings in the entire city: the Salem Center, where the scientific branch of the X-Men often produced inventions, cures for viruses, and hypothesis of research development, and Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, where the X-Men raised and protected a generation of young mutants.  
  
She stopped time once more, quickly entered Kate Pryde's room on the third floor through her window, and fused her consciousness with that of her present body. Rachel flew back to the Baxter Building before she sped forward in time again. This time, when the clock had reached 0912, on May 19, 2034, she was alone, with a vacant body.  
  
She waited for 6 minutes, and was beginning to wonder if Kate had problems finding their time-traveling friend Forge, who was supposed to lead her back, when she felt the time continuum being disrupted. She turned to her friend's body, to see emotion coming back into her eyes.  
  
"How'd it go?" she finally asked.  
  
"Great! Kelly's alive, and he actually becomes a mutant activist!" She ran to a wall of computer screens, camera monitors, and keyboards, and began punching the controls. 1 of the monitors came alive, displaying the picture of a news reporter.  
  
"That's right folks," said the Asia woman, "I'm here at the South Bronx Mutant Internment Camp, where US Marshall Granger and his men still cannot find the cause of the escape that took place 8 days ago. They have estimated that some 2,000 mutants are now loose in New York, and it is advised that you stay locked inside your homes with your families. The famous Kate Pryde-Rasputin, who many of you know as the youngest X-Man-she joined the vigilante gang when she was 14-is said to be 1 of the 7 rebels who instigated the breakout. Officials have found and killed 5 of her companions, but are still searching for her and an unnamed mutant, a hound."  
  
Kate groaned and slumped to the floor in aggravation. "Nothing changed? How? Kelly became a mutant *activist*; how could nothing change?!" She slammed her fist against the keyboard, and the monitor became blank.  
  
"So we don't change the past," Rachel said, determined. "We'll change the future. They can't contain mutants if they can't capture them, and they can't capture them without Sentinels."  
  
Kate looked up puzzled. "So how do we get rid of every Sentinel in the entire world? It's impossible."  
  
"We don't. We get rid of every Sentinel that will be made from this point on. Then, those that are in circulation now will eventually malfunction or be destroyed, leaving the world devoid of Sentinels."  
  
Kate's eyes were rapidly tracing some invisible lines in the air, calculating these words, and deciding. Finally, she stood defiantly, and said, "We're gonna need a hell a lot of fire power."  
  
"And we're in just the right place to get it." 


	9. Me But Phoenix But Dark Phoenix

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Shout outs going out to tenshi no koneko and Thanx4reading! (As well as the original characters of Thanx4reading, who made me laugh and then made me cry. ;) For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past ten years, the Wachowski brothers are the guys responsible for the Matrix series.  
  
241 timeline 04-19-2034 Manhattan, New York, United States  
  
The 700 Wendigo G-7. A sleek handgun, made entirely of adamantium, which fired blasts of genome-Iron plasma, heated to 700ºC, at a .7 thickness. Rachel's favorite toy. She shoved the chunk of metal into the back of her black nylon pants. She telekinetically formatted a black leather trench coat that hugged her torso and fell to the soles of her knee-high boots.  
  
The Relic Room, on the first floor of the Baxter Building, displayed costumes, weapons, and gadgets of all the Fantastic Four allies. Rachel stepped over to the X-Men section. Her father's ruby quartz sunglasses were revolving upon a stand in a glass case, catching a glimmer from the halogen lights above. She released a minuscule optic blast, shattering the case, and snatched the glasses off the stand. They fit her face perfectly. Looking at her reflection, she saw that they hid most of her tattoos, and she was surprised at how much she looked like her mother without them.  
  
"Look at you!" Rachel snapped around to see Kate in her old X-Men uniform, a grin on her face. "If the Wachowski brothers saw you, they'd be suing for property rights," her friend teased.  
  
Rachel threw a duffel bag of rifles, grenades, and ammo into her face, and she caught them with some difficulty. "At least I don't look like I just jumped out of a comic book." Kitty laughed good-naturedly and motioned for her to follow. The two went to the garage below, where more than 30 beautiful cars sat, either trashed beyond repair, or shining with 20 pounds of wax.  
  
Kate retrieved a key chain from a security booth and went to a 2002 Matrix X-8. She dropped the duffel bag in the trunk and looked up with a look of accomplishment. "It's an old one of the X-Men. Used to belong to Cyclops, actually." Rachel pet the car affectionately, memories springing to her mind, and Kate's voice took a suspicious turn. "Is there a reason you're wearing the man's shades?"  
  
Summers gave a small chuckle. "Let's just say, he's always been my hero," she said. "What're we gonna do about the Sentinels upstairs? The others will trace their distress signal here."  
  
"Why don't you just torch them like you did right after Franklin-" Kate lost her words. "-you know."  
  
"No, I don't. What're you talking about?"  
  
"Well, you kinda pulled a Jean Grey, to be honest," said Kate. "There was a lot of fire, a big bird, and then our problem was solved."  
  
Rachel's stomach lurched. ~Phoenix?~ She could sense that her friend knew more than she gave away, but she didn't like to pry into others' minds, and really wasn't comfortable with the thought of following her mother's footsteps. ~The whole me-but-Phoenix-but-Dark Phoenix cycle just doesn't sound appealing.~ Rachel finally realized Kate was waiting for an answer. "Well, I don't really have any control over that-" She needed to change the subject. "Look, are you gonna start this thing up or not? We've gotta get a move on."  
  
Kate smirked. "I thought you'd like take it for a ride."  
  
* * *  
  
616 timeline 04-19-2004 Westchester, New York, United States  
  
Rachel was awakened by chirping birds in the distance, as a cool breeze swept over her frame. She looked up, where cotton ball clouds were slowly migrating to her left, against a perfect blue backdrop. She felt different; her hair had grown out to the middle of her back, and her body ached immensely.  
  
~Where am I?~ A procession of images flew through her. She saw herself driving the Matrix, Kate phasing the both of them through miles of traffic at 95 mph. She saw herself fighting bravely, Kate beside her, bullets and plasma spraying in all directions. She saw the Sentinels overcoming the two girls, closing in on all sides, possibly hundreds of them. She saw Kate bending over her, telling her to leave, urging her, hypnotizing her.  
  
~Fuck!~ Somehow, when Rachel had transported Kate's consciousness back in time, she had given some of her own powers to her friend. ~So, she knew that Cyclops was my father, and she knew that it was the true Phoenix inside me that had killed all those Sentinels.~ More images came. She saw herself flying through the timestream, engulfed in the Phoenix Force, far away from her home. Kate had sent Rachel to another timeline, forcing her to leave her best friend to her death. She pounded the ground with a fist. ~Damn her!~  
  
She looked around, shocked to find that she was in Westchester, a mere mile or 2 from Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. She got up, somewhat afraid to see the place that she had cherished in her memories for 11 years; what if it wasn't as perfect as she remembered? She mounted the marble steps to come to enormous double-doors, made entirely of glass. The doors opened automatically, swinging wide for her to enter, and she stepped into the elaborate lobby of the mutant school.  
  
She saw 3 ornate chandeliers, 2 room-sized sitting areas, and a wall of glass, from marble floors to mirrored ceilings, looking out onto the scenery outside. She was shocked; it truly was Heaven on Earth. She looked forward, where a woman with moving, tentacle-like tresses of hair was standing behind a counter. Above her head, a sign read INFORMATION. The woman politely and discretely entered her mind to ask what she was looking for, and Rachel rudely ignored her.  
  
She looked to a schedule above the Information Booth, which told her that the morning break began at 9:30, and sure enough, the digital clock beside it said 0929. A soft wind chime sounded, and the halls erupted with noise. Children, as young as 6 years old and as old as 18, began pouring out into the hallways, running, shouting excitedly, laughing together. They invaded the once quiet room, jumping upon the couches and throwing pillows at each other. Some sat calmly before 1 of the 12 small chest stands. Others played music from boom-boxes.  
  
Rachel was overwhelmed. She stumbled backward from the chaotic crowd of crazy children, but bumped into someone. Turning, she came face to face with a tall teenage girl, with black hair that was highlighted bright purple in thick streaks, matching her contacts.  
  
"I'm sorry, miss," the girl said in a thick Russian accent. "I don't think I've seen you here before. Did you just register? My name's Illyana. I can show you around if you li-"  
  
"Illyana?!" Rachel couldn't stop the words from blurting out of her mouth. "Rasputin!"  
  
"Well, yes...have we met?" A look of sudden realization, mingled with shock, came over Illyana's face, and Rachel decided she didn't want to know what the girl was thinking. She took off running.  
  
Rasputin, whose own head was spinning, tried to keep the stranger back, but was met with a small shove of TK. She ran as fast as she could down the corridor she'd just come from, until she came to the office of Charles Xavier. She burst through the door without knocking, interrupting a teacher meeting.  
  
"Professor! I think I just saw Jean!" 


	10. Avalanche of Information

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks so much, tenshi no koneko and Thanx4reading, for the reviews that reek of kindness and appreciation. For those who don't read the comics: Nightcrawler's teleport is depicted as a stinky cloud of brimstone, rather than a cool swirl of black smoke.  
  
616 timeline 04-19-2004 Queens, New York, United States  
  
The room was immersed in suffocating steam, but Rachel didn't mind. Her bruised and tired body basked in a glow of aroma and soothing shampoos. The events of the past 6 hours were a blur in her mind, but somehow she ended up in Queens with a young man named Nick. A struggling artist from Michigan, Nick had experienced losses similar to her own. He owned a large studio-apartment, full of watercolors and charcoal sketches, and he sheltered Rachel there, despite their incredibly short relationship.  
  
She stepped out of her hot bath, drained the tub, and dried herself with a towel. Looking in the mirror, she saw her TK tattoos and felt the past 12 years seeping into her, threatening to revert her to the Hound. She shuddered and turned away to her dingy clothes, riddled with bullet holes. She tried to create a new outfit, but, as before, her jaunt through the timestream had stunted her abilities.  
  
She sighed and put on her black pants and tank top, deciding that it was for the best, as she was hoping to start a life of normalcy here in New York. ~And where better to start~ she thought to herself, ~than in the way I dress?~ Ten minutes later, just as she was lacing up her boots, Rachel heard a scream through the walls. She replaced her Wendigo to the back of her pants, while running out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, and into the combined dining room/kitchen. Nick was writhing on the tiled floor in flames.  
  
"Hello, Rachel Summers," slithered an acidic voice behind her. She spun around to face a woman with long, jet-black hair in a shining black corset and cape.  
  
"Who the hell are you?" Rachel spat.  
  
"My name is Selene," answered the woman, "but most know me as the Black Queen of the Inner Circle. I've come to secure my place next to Mastermind on the Hellions' throne." Rachel knew the story well. Jean Grey had joined the club of mutant aristocrats, under the influence of Dark Phoenix. Now, this Selene character was convinced she was going to follow her mother's footsteps.  
  
"I don't want to have anything to do with your Hellions," she said.  
  
"Regardless," Selene purred, "Sebastian Shaw will be interested in you if he finds out you've entered our reality. So we'll just have to make sure he doesn't find out." She put up her hands to send a gush to telekinesis flying toward Rachel, but she jumped out of the way just in time. "Running form TK, Rachel? What's the matter, don't have your powers?" Selene laughed with a high-pitched voice, annoying Rachel to no end.  
  
She pulled her gun from behind her, quickly took aim, fired, and flipped through the air to avoid a few flames shooting for her. The plasma embedded into Selene's left chest, burning through the skin and muscle. She yelped in pain and threw another punch of TK at her.  
  
"I don't need powers to handle a slut in a Halloween costume," Rachel mocked her. But as soon as she had said it, her mind was seized by fierce telepathy, freezing her in her place, and Selene, gripping her chest, came forward with her hands raised. An enormous wall of fire pitched before her, roaring inches from Summers' face. The flames froze for a second or two, as Selene took a last look at her victim, and then came forward at an intense speed, straight for Rachel.  
  
But a gust of wind and ice blew through the apartment window at the last moment, and a blizzard overcame the tiny home. As the fire died, Storm flew in, pinning Selene against a wall, and Rachel fell to the floor, freezing to death, the world slowly going black around her. A puff of smoke burst before her, and she was overwhelmed with a terrible stench. Rachel passed out, as Kurt Wagner picked her up and teleported her out of the apartment.  
  
* * *  
  
616 timeline 04-22-2004 Westchester, New York, United States  
  
Rachel felt herself regaining consciousness, while her world was still dark. Her telepathy was somehow far more advanced than ever, connecting her to peoples and worlds far away, and as she quietly observed, she found that she contained prior knowledge of their history, cultures, and customs, though she couldn't remember where or when she'd learned them. This was far different than her first three experiences with timetravel, which took weeks for full recovery; she had total control of her abilities in less than 48 hours after she exited the timestream.  
  
A voice in her head shook Rachel of her thoughts, and she opened her eyes. She was lying upon an examination table, wearing a form-fitting pair of gray sweats with a silver X upon the chest. She sat up abruptly, pulling an I.V. from a vein and several EKG sensors from her chest. A hand pushed her back firmly but gently, and she looked to her left to see the aged face of a bald Chinese man in a hoverchair.  
  
He introduced himself. "Good morning. My name is Professor Charles Xavier, and you are being housed and cared for at my learning institution, the School for Gifted Youngsters."  
  
"I know who you are," Rachel mumbled, as she gathered her memories of the past few days.  
  
"Yes, of course," he said. "These are two of my students, and members of my mutant league against crime, the X-Men." She followed his hand gesture, and saw the blue-furred teleporter and, for the second time, the best friend she'd never met. "Five years ago, Miss Pryde, who had just joined the X-Men, informed her team of a future piece of legislation that would bring about the Mutant Massacre. With her help, we prevented a political assassination that would become a huge push for this legislation." Rachel began to wonder where the professor was going with his strange greetings. "However, the Pryde who had helped us was not the one you see before you today, but the psyche of a much older and experienced Pryde from a different reality, Kate Rasputin, of the 241 timeline."  
  
It took a few seconds for all of this to sink in, and when Rachel finally understood his meaning, she was frustrated to find out that she had subconsciously known it all the time. "I got lost," she started, "when I traveled through the time space continuum, and accidentally sent her to M.E., here." Things were starting to make sense, though she still didn't know where she was receiving this new knowledge. "That's why nothing changed in our world! Because we never stopped Kelly's assassination there."  
  
"Precisely," Xavier stated, pleased to see how quickly she caught on. "However, the conscious-switching procedure left permanent results upon both women, and Kitty here still has a few useful memories from Kate's mind. One of those memories was her best friend, you. Therefore, when we rescued the person we believed to be the revived Jean Grey yesterday, Kitty was the only one who knew that you were, in fact, her daughter."  
  
Summers' mind began to spin. "Oh, no. No, no. You haven't told either of them, have you?" The other three figures in the room looked to each other with silent expressions of curiosity. "Have you told my parents who I am?!" she asked.  
  
"No," Pryde answered quickly. "I only told my boyfriend, Kurt. He told the professor, but no one else knows. We weren't sure how everyone would react." She became silent.  
  
"Well...thanks," Rachel managed. "I'd rather no one else knew."  
  
Professor Xavier broke in. "Very well, then. None of us will inform anyone of your identity. I'd love for you to stay with us, if you'd like, but I will require that you take at least 8 of the classes we offer to sixteen-year olds. And, now that your powers are revived, the option to join the team is up to you, but you must uphold a 3.5 GPA or better. Now, if you will excuse me, I must attend to a meeting. I leave you with these two as your guide into school life here at the X-Mansion. If you ever have any questions, or want to contact me, they'll show you the location of my office." Using buttons upon a control panel of his chair, he left the room with a smile.  
  
The three figures in the room looked at each other in an awkward silence, as Rachel tried to absorb the avalanche of information that had just poured over her in the past 5 minutes. "So," Kurt Wagner offered, "vat do you vant to see firsth?" 


	11. Home Again

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you so much, Thanx4reading and Tenshi no Koneko, for your ever-expanding patience. I am sooooo sorry this one took so long, but I live in San Diego, and the fires kinda ruined my entire way of life for a while there. Thanx4reading, yes, the Prof. is half-Chinese, half-English (in the comics), and Tenshi, if you tell me who your fav. character is, I'm much more likely to use them again. ;P Anything between these symbols: __words__ is music. (Can you figure out which one of my favorite songs Raye's listening to?) And to my knowledge, www.xsgy.ed is not a real website.  
  
616 timeline 04-26-2004 Westchester, New York, United States  
  
Xavier pressed a button upon his hoverchair control panel, and slide 103 came into view upon an enormous monitor at the front of the university- sized classroom. "Now, the superego is the part of our subconscious that develops our moral code," he told his students. Watching them from the back of the room, he was impressed by their diligence and good work ethic. The 75 juniors and seniors that signed up for the Psychology course punched the keyboards before them, entering a plethora of notes into their personalized accounts, at amazing speeds.  
  
All, that is, except for Rachel, whose photographic memory was absorbing the information before her with ease; she was the only one in the room who hadn't even bothered to open her student account from the laptop provided to each desk. In fact, she had amazing multitasking abilities. As she read the monitor, listened to her headphones, and paid attention to the professor's words, her mind drifted over the past 4 days.  
  
She had adapted to life at the X-Mansion relatively well. (__I've felt the hate rise up in me__) Her identity was kept secret; her classmates and teachers knew her only as Rachel, which didn't seem to bother anyone, ("an imbalance in the psyche can lead") as other residents had similar stories, like a beautiful brunette with huge boobs and a southern accent, who was known only as the Rogue. She had telepathically hidden her telekinetic tattoos from everyone on campus since Day 1, (~damn! that new girl's hot~) which allowed her to avoid uncomfortable questions. And Rachel found that M.E. was the perfect place to start over. ("irreversible trauma tends to disrupt") No one knew anything about her tragic past, or her betrayals as a hound, so she was perfectly anonymous at school, much to her satisfaction.  
  
She shared a dorm room with her old friends Kitty and Paige Gutherie, and a very reserved, though extremely intelligent, Native American girl named Monet. (__I wish I didn't like this__) She was in classes from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m. on odd weekdays, and went home an hour and a half early on even schooldays, (~he enrolled her; I mean she's not even paying~) but returned at 7 p.m. for her elective, Psychology. She had on average 6 to 7 hours of homework a night, for eight college-level classes that would never be accepted at any university. ("assorted paralyses, speech disorders, reflexive") Yet, none of the students at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters seemed to mind the heavy workload, or the intense subject matter, and Rachel, who found that she no longer needed sleep, (__the pain was always free__) had very little to complain about. After all, she was always busy; she lived in an enormous, beautiful mansion, with more than 800 computers and over 40 acres of land for her to explore and seek solitude; she already had a small group of close-knit friends; and, for the first time since she was 6 years old, she felt like she was home! (~looks so much like her mother~)  
  
Rachel whipped her head around to meet the professor's gaze, and he gave her a smile and a wink, before turning to slide 121. Just as a diagram of the human brain showed, the digital clock on the wall reached 2030, and soft windchimes sounded across the halls.  
  
"Before you leave," Xavier instructed, "please bookmark this diagram in your account, at www.xsgy.ed/psych/a49.html and label all the shaded regions tonight. Everyone, make sure to get a good night's rest before your Statistics exam tomorrow."  
  
Paige, who sat in the desk to Rachel's right, leaned over and spoke low. "Speaking of Commando Mathmatico, let's go get Bobby and John."  
  
"Who's Commando Mathmatico?" Rachel asked, as they entered the corridor and took the elevator down to the garage.  
  
Kitty giggled. "Just a nickname we gave Professor Summers. You see, you have excellent timing; you just missed Midterms week, which, of course, is hell on earth. But, since all the teachers know that their students are studying their asses off, they don't assign homework that week."  
  
"All, that is," Paige offered, "accept for Summers. And he's the only teacher psycho enough to give a unit test the week after midterms, too." She rolled her eyes, and stepped out of the elevator. The garage was the size of a hospital parking lot, a vast, cement box, upheld by concrete posts, decorated by a the bright colors of a few hundred parked cars. Parking below was a privilege that all students were given; the press and media had to park outside in the heat. But, of course, the occasional student would abuse such a privilege, through graffiti or attempted robbery, and would have their car sent home or impounded.  
  
The three girls stepped through a door to a separate cement box, the staff garage. Here, Scott Summer's Driver's Ed/Auto Shop class was finally ending, fifteen minutes past the bell, as usual. Bobby Drake and John Allerdyce were gawking at one of their teacher's impressive machines, again, a usual occurrence. They joined the company, and quietly observed the testosterone-high.  
  
"It's an '04 Honda Valkyrie Rune," Scott was bragging. "It's got an 1832 cc engine, 6 cylinders, and goes from 0 to 60 in less than 5 seconds." The two adolescent males whistled admiringly at the curvy motorcycle, and their idol smirked behind his ruby quartz shades, which matched the Candy Black Cherry paint perfectly. Paige wrapped her arms around John's waist and tugged slightly, her way of saying, "I'm bored."  
  
Scott laughed lightheartedly. "Well, I'm sure I'm keeping you. We can talk about it more on Wednesday. Maybe I'll even let you take a little drive, before your exam."  
  
"It's huge!" Bobby sighed. "I mean, how much does it weigh?"  
  
"769.6 pounds," he answered. "It's not for little girls, that much is certain."  
  
Rachel almost laughed at the remark, thinking of the many times she'd ridden behind her father on this exact bike, at age 5. "Well," she corrected, "769.6 is its base weight, but, with all the firepower you put into it, it's closer to 985.1 pounds, wouldn't you say?"  
  
Bobby and John light up with excitement. "Firepower? You put weapons in it?!?"  
  
But Scott ignored them, turning his attention to her. "How did you know that?" he asked curiously.  
  
She shrugged her shoulders. "I have good eyes, I guess."  
  
He laughed and nodded. "Right, of course," he said sarcastically. "You're the new kid, right? Stats?" She nodded. "You really should be in my auto class; we're doing a project next week-"  
  
"I'd love to," she interrupted, "but I can't fit it in. My Elective II block is filled by Psych."  
  
He consented, and suddenly his faced changed, as if something he'd forgotten had come to his mind again. "Look, I don't mean to make you feel awkward, but I feel like I should know you from somewhere. Have we met?"  
  
"No," Rachel shook her head, trying to sound blasé. "I'd remember, and I don't." The five students looked to each other uncomfortably for a moment, before Kitty said, "Well, we really ought to go" and so left.  
  
On the elevator, they met Kurt, who, at age 25, was another teacher at the school. (Rachel didn't dare ask about the 8-year difference between him and Kitty.) As they traveled up the 5 stories to their dorms, she found it hard to contain herself. Her dad!! In flesh and blood! ~And he was so impressed, you could totally tell! I can't wait til I talk to~ Then she suddenly remembered something.  
  
"Hey, guys, where has Jean Grey been? I haven't seen her around anywhere." 6 faces looked back at her with wide eyes, expressions caught between suspicion and distress. The elevator door opened, and Paige, Bobby, and John left, without saying a word to her. In the hallway, she looked to her best friend with a blank expression. "What?"  
  
Kitty turned to Kurt, whose face seemed to be in pain, as he tried to answer. "Vell, Rrachel, you see...Jzean joined vis a cosmic entity of infinite pover-"  
  
"Right," she jumped in. "The Phoenix. Is she on a mission for the Shi'ar or something?"  
  
Kurt shook his head. "Rrachel, I-I am so sorry to be sthe one to tell you vis, but...she died." Rachel's eyes filled with fire, and the last thing she heard was a very loud explosion. 


	12. An Old Confidant

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks, Tenshi and Thanx4reading, for the reviews. We get to really see Raye go crazy now!! Madelyne Pryor is the first Jean clone, which eventually becomes the Goblin Queen, but all this will be explained in a later chapter. And keep the little group of femme-warriors, including Sanctity, in mind.  
  
616 timeline 07-16-2004 Westchester, New York, United States  
  
Needless to say, Rachel's anonymity quickly died out, after her "murder attempt" upon Professor Wagner. While her friends continued to defend her, saying that the incident was nothing more than a loss of control over her abilities, which occurs in many mutants during high school, most of the student body grew extremely suspicious of this mysterious powerhouse. (The fact that Rachel gained full control of her powers in less than two weeks didn't help her case.) In response, she buried herself in her schoolwork, socializing rarely, and only then with a select few.  
  
But the scorn of her peers was of little concern to her, especially in comparison with her own internal developments. A few weeks after she came to the X-Mansion, Rachel began falling into fits of delusion. For the first time in her life, she could dwell on her past, as she no longer needed to fight for her life, or those of her loved ones, every second of the day. Such dwelling soon lead to depression, coupled with the delayed mourning of her closest friends and her first love. She joined the X-Men, giving her less time to think, but her choice to take up the codename Phoenix II earned her even more suspicion, this time from her teammates. (Which was encouraged by Cyclops' new bride, Madelyne Pryor, who had accused Rachel, ironically, of being a clone of Jean.) By the beginning of May, she was also experiencing panic attacks, and saw hallucinations on a regular basis.  
  
Today was just one of these occasions. She had wandered into the forest, in an attempt to lose a trail of men in camoflauge that kept training lasers upon her forehead. Yet, just when she thought she'd lost the tiny army, two women ran into a clearing nearby, their chests heaving. One, a short, black woman with a stumpy figure, coughed up a mouthful of blood and spat it into a bush. "Sanctity," she said, turning to her companion, a teenager, "we must stop. We can't keep this up for long."  
  
"If we stop, and Apocalypse's forces reach us, we'll never be able to resist." About twenty more females joined, bending to grip their sides and hurl upon the ground.  
  
"If, yes," the first agreed. "But, there is no 'if' in this route. We will die of exhaustion. Come, we can stay by the riverbank; there'll be plenty of game. Just one night, and then we can start again at dawn, with renewed energy."  
  
Sanctity shook her head. "Dead men have no energy. Replenish yourselves with thoughts of the Chosen One. He would not wa-" But, before she could finish her sentence, an ambush of androids stormed into the group, unleashing fire with lasers and plasma rifles. Rachel covered her face in horror of the massacre. But, just as she had done so, the sounds of warfare stopped. She looked from behind her fingers to find the trees empty and the air quiet. Desperately, she sobbed into her hands, begging whatever higher powers existed for some sort of sanity.  
  
She didn't know how long she had been crying, but some time down the road, she felt a telepathic presence coming toward her fast. She hid behind the tree, just as a fellow X-Man, Wolverine, bound into the clearing, a concerned look on his face. "Come on, darlin'," he spoke to the emptiness. "I can smell you anyway; there's no use hiding."  
  
She slid into view, throwing him an irritated look. "What?"  
  
"I could ask you the same," he replied. "You forget about Survival Fitness, or what?"  
  
"Oh, yeah, sorry about that." Her episode had interrupted her commute to P.E. "I...well, I had this research paper due, and..." She trailed. "Anyway, it won't happen again."  
  
Logan sighed, and dropped onto a log. "Yeah, that's what Ororo told me you'd say. Apparently, you haven't been to Government all week."  
  
Rachel's face blushed. "What, are you spying on me or something?!"  
  
"Kinda." She crossed her arms in defiance, then put a hand on her hip, but failed to think of any better response than, "Why?"  
  
Logan leaned forward, his forearms resting upon his knees, and motioned with his head to the log. "Sit." Seeing no other option, she wiped the running mascara from her eyes and sat beside him, arms crossed, uncomfortable.  
  
Logan was silent for a long time before he spoke. "You know, Jean used to live in Annadale with her parents and her older sister. Nothing special, really, just a simple house in the suburbs. They kept her room the same, after she left for Xavier's. Every summer when she'd visit, she'd just add on to it, so now it's still pink, with stuffed animals, but there's teen posters and stuff."  
  
He chuckled to himself, and Rachel relaxed slightly, appreciative that he was willing to talk to her about Jean. Everyone else in the mansion was terrified to reminisce like this, especially since Maddy Pryor felt extremely threatened by any mention of her husband's dead wife.  
  
"Well," he continued, "toward the end, you know, right before she left, Phoenix was gettin' really hard on her mind. She'd see stuff she couldn't explain, get depressed or violent for no reason, that kind of thing."  
  
"Did she tell the Professor? Maybe he might have known why."  
  
"Nah," he shook his head, "she never wanted anyone to know how hard it was. Felt like she had to prove to all of 'em that she could handle it."  
  
"All except for you," Rachel stated.  
  
Logan shrugged. "She'd already seen inside my mind. I guess she figured I could relate to what she was goin' through. Sometimes I think she didn't even realize how serious it was-what she was goin' through." His voice grew tight, and he hung his head for a second.  
  
"Anyway, when things got really bad, she'd go over to her old house and just sit in that room. I went with her a couple of times. She'd just lay on her bed, and absorb it all for hours. She never mentioned a thing about it, but she'd always come out feeling better." Another pause. "So I thought that maybe you'd want to go there, sometime when your grandparents aren't home. You know, see if it works for you."  
  
Rachel felt her skin grow cold. "My gran-? Oh, no, no. You've got it all wrong-"  
  
"Oh, come on, kid," Wolverine answered, rolling his eyes. "You look exactly like her, you have the same powers as she did, and your fuckin' codename is Phoenix. I'm surprised Cyke hasn't figure it out; I mean, you might as well have worn a huge stamp on your forehead that says 'Summers'."  
  
Rachel's thoughts grew gloomy at the mention of her father. "He hasn't figured it out, because he's so wrapped up in his little Maddy. He doesn't even think to question *her*."  
  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"Nothing," she said smugly.  
  
"No, hold on. You're from an alternate reality; I know how these things work. You time-travelers study M.E. more than your own history, so you know exactly what how everything works out. Now what the hell did you mean by that?"  
  
Rachel narrowed her eyes with a smirk. "Something tells me, Mr. Logan, that you have an idea of what I meant already. Why are you getting so suspicious all of a sudden, hm?"  
  
"Well..." he fumbled. "Let's just put it this way: everyone has their own scent. I mean, you may look like a direct copy of your mother, but you smell nothing like her." She cocked an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. "Not good or bad; I'm just saying. Anyway, everything about that gal is the same as Jeannie. It's not right."  
  
"Yeah, well, I wouldn't worry too much about her." She got up, patting her old uncle on the shoulder as she walked off. "Mom will kick her ass when she gets back."  
  
Logan practically choked on her words. "What?! Gets back?"  
  
"I'll talk to you later, Logan." She waved over her shoulder.  
  
"Wait, what the hell...?" Logan watched her walk away, confused and amused at the same time, and shook his head. ~Just like her mother.~ 


	13. Climax of Trauma

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you, Tenshi no Koneko, Thanx4reading, and Jean- Grey/Phoenix, for your reviews!! Just some history for those of you who don't read the comics much: the Shi'ar is an alien race of mutants that are close allies of the X-Men. The M'Kraan Crystal is the Nexus of all Realities-basically, the timestream that I explained earlier is just for one reality in the Marvel Universe, and there are many realities, each with their own complicated timelines, all contained within this crystal, which acts as a doorway between them. The Crystal is also the resting place of the Phoenix Force. Okay, enjoy!!  
  
616 timeline 07-16-2004 Westchester, New York, United States  
  
A gentle push of telekinesis left the door swinging open, revealing a pink bed with a princess canopy, before a backdrop of black and white. The various posters, which depicted every musical group from the New Kids on the Block to Black Sabbath to the Eagles, covered every inch of the 14-foot wall. Rachel stepped in cautiously, rubbing the outside of her thighs as a nervous habit. To her right, a ticklish breeze filtered through the room from a window flanked by laced curtains. It was exactly as Logan had described it.  
  
She sat upon the edge of the bed, careful not to wrinkle the perfect comforter. Looking up, she caught her breath, as she saw her mother looking into her eyes. She sat still for a full two seconds. When she finally realized that she was looking at her own reflection, Rachel laughed at herself so hard she fell back onto the bed, hugging her sides in pain.  
  
Wiping her tearing eyes with a chuckle, she rose to inspect the dresser on which the deceptive mirror sat. Several stuffed animals smiled awkwardly at her. She looked through a wooden jewelry box and a craft kit without interest. But it was a tiny, simple crystal that caught her eye. The jewel had a bright pink color and was shaped into the form of a bird.  
  
Rachel carefully picked it up with her TK, and cradled it in the palm of her hand. As soon as it had touched her skin, it appeared to glow and, in a smooth gesture that almost rendered grace, changed its shape and size. Hovering before her, it transformed into a sphere the size of her head. Inside, a network of rotating bands sent out a wild wind, and blast a shimmering light upon the wall, which read:  
  
In Honor of Jean Grey, the Shi'ar Empire donates this holempathic matrix, constructed of the M'Kraan Crystal, as a Tribute to her Humanitarian Contributions as the Phoenix and the Self-Sacrifice she gave in order to Defeat the Dark Phoenix.  
  
Afraid that her grandparents might come home at any minute to find their daughter's window bursting with light, Rachel grasped the matrix. And in doing so, she awoke the power contained within. The light and wind vanished, just as suddenly as they'd come, and the sphere became the jewel again, falling to the floor with a thud. But Rachel was nowhere to be seen.  
  
She was in fact no longer of physical composition. Her body became a part of the M'Kraan Crystal itself, as the Phoenix Force shook her awake once again, and Rachel watched history unfold before her. She saw the first creatures of creation. She saw centuries of war, whose brutality far surpassed anything seen on Earth. She saw small clans of noble beings, the X-Men to name one, fighting against tyranny and injustice. All this she absorbed in a few seconds' time, before she was thrust back into the reality she'd come from. Rachel awoke, naked and shaking, nestled inside the Crystal's womb, deep within the heart of the Sun.  
  
* * *  
  
616 timeline 08-10-2004 Westchester, New York, United States  
  
Everyone noticed a change in Rachel when she returned. For one thing, her powers were no longer limited to her genetic abilities; on the battle field, she often displayed the newborn ability to teleport, produce ice or fire, and move at the speed of light, among others. She donned the Dark Phoenix costume, saying that she loved the color red. Her attitude had changed as well. Whereas she had established herself as a no-nonsense hermit with impeccable grades before, she came back with little to no appreciation for school (or any kind of authority). She not only socialized with her friends again, but soon became the group's leader. Even more surprising, she often led that group into fits of rebellion that usually got them and Xavier into legal trouble. But, as far as anyone could tell, she was far happier.  
  
Because, if nothing else, Rachel took back from the Sun a sense of identity. She now knew that the Phoenix Force had not been involved in her life in a series of spontaneous interest, but had actually been a part of her since her birth. And, above all, she now knew that nothing could stop her. Or so she thought, when she rapped upon Professor Xavier's door that morning.  
  
His voice came from behind the thick oak. "Come in, Rachel." She stepped in with a pleasant smile and seated herself in a comfortable chair before his desk. "How are you, Professor?"  
  
"Quite well," he answered. "And you? These past couple of months you've seemed restless, irritable."  
  
"No, I'm just fine, myself. Listen, I actually came here to ask you if the gang and I could go out tonight and see a few movies, maybe get a bite to eat."  
  
Xavier studied her for a while. "I've already told Alex that I would not allow him or his 'gang' a permit off campus for the weekend."  
  
She nodded. "May I ask why?"  
  
"You may."  
  
Rachel rolled her eyes in annoyance. "So?"  
  
"So, I do not think it wise to give free reign to 10 specific students who have a tendency to break the law together."  
  
"With all due respect, I think that's a little harsh."  
  
"Really?" His eyes were weary. "3 weeks ago, you were kicked out of several restaurants for displaying your abilities in public, and 4 calls were made to the police complaining that you were disturbing the peace. 2 weeks ago, Jubilee received a speeding ticket, without a license, John exposed himself in public, and you were all drinking underage. Last weekend, you stole a gun from the X-Men armory, shot several rounds at each other, and robbed half the shops of the downtown mall." He paused. "Or have I left something out?"  
  
"Well, we didn't get caught drinking, and that mall thing was just a game we play called Supermarket Sweep. We would've returned everything, except that we were interrupted. Oh, and the gun? That was training."  
  
"Training?"  
  
"Yeah. You know, all those kids are very interested in joining the X-Men."  
  
"Well, of course they are. You're an X-Man, and they idolize you. And if they only judged the amount of responsibility and commitment required by your example-"  
  
"Oh, I'm setting a bad example now, is that it?"  
  
"Frankly, yes."  
  
Rachel scanned the old man's mind. "You want me off the team."  
  
"First and foremost, it is rude to read another person's mind without permission-"  
  
"You did it several times before I put up a telepathic shield."  
  
"-And second, yes, I'm going to ask that you step down from your position, but not because you're 'setting a bad example'. If that were the case, half of my recruits would be out of the question. I think it's far too much stress on you."  
  
"Stress? Professor, I am more than capable-"  
  
"Physically, yes. I'm referring to psychological stress."  
  
There was a minute-long silence, before Rachel finally muttered, "Because I'm obviously on the verge of a mental breakdown."  
  
"Rachel, you may have put up a telepathic wall between us, but, whether you realize it or not, every time you have a panic attack or get lost in an astral jump, your mind screams out to me."  
  
"What the hell is an astral jump?"  
  
"That's when you travel through time with your mind only and leave your body here."  
  
She gave him a blank stare. "I can't do that."  
  
"Of course you can. I've heard you talk to people from different realities."  
  
"They were real? I thought I was just seeing things!"  
  
"And you weren't concerned about this?" She shrugged. "Look, Rachel, I can assure you that you're not hallucinating. It's one thing to travel back and forward through time in one reality; it's another entirely to jump between timelines. And you went back and forward between M.E. and your reality twice in a matter of eight days. Your body basically went through low-level trauma, and it's performing spontaneous astral jumps as part of the recovery from that trauma. It's nothing to be worried about, however much it may be an inconvenience. The depression you're going through could also be linked to the sheer intensity of your telepathic abilities, which enhance human emotion exponentially. However, your aggressive behavior and your panic attacks are the result of emotional trauma." Finally, he took a breath, as he prepared to tell her what he was getting at. "I think you should talk to someone."  
  
"Like a shrink?!"  
  
"No, it could be me, or Ororo, maybe Hank. Hell, it can be Logan if you want. But I think you need to vent to someone what you've gone through."  
  
"Fuck you."  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"Fuck you," she repeated, now rising from the chair. "You have no idea what I've been through, and quite frankly, I don't think you could handle it. Fine, whatever. I'll drop out of the team, but I'm not going to talk to anyone, just so that they can report back to you. I've had enough of your brainwashing."  
  
"Rachel, I'm trying to help you." As she opened the door to leave, he tried to forcibly hold her back telepathically, desperate not to lose her entirely. But, in response, Rachel choked him with a fierce grip of telekinesis, toppling him out of his chair and onto the floor.  
  
"I've had enough help from you, Grandpa. Thanks." And with that, she stormed out, slamming his office door shut behind her.  
  
Outside, Sam Gutherie was waiting for her. "What the hell happened? I heard screaming."  
  
Rachel chuckled. "That old man doesn't know who he's dealing with. C'mon, we don't need a fucking permit." 


	14. Playing With Fire

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you, Thanx4reading, for the review! Just to clear some things up, which the movies confused for everybody: Logan is really close to Kitty Pryde, Jubilee, and Rachel Summers, (and obviously the love of his life, Jean Grey); other than that, he NEVER opens up to anybody!! (especially not Rogue, who he never even knew that well)  
  
616 timeline 08-25-2004 Westchester, New York, United States  
  
Logan had no idea where he was. There were lights shining everywhere, but they were faded behind a veil of smoke, and flames were roaring nearby. Then he smelt the scent of burnt lilies in the wind, and spun around in surprise. Jean Grey was watching him, her eyes lacking their usual luster, encased in a jade melancholy. She gave a feeble smile, and swept into his mind. ~Logan, I need you to do something for me.~  
  
~Anything,~ he offered. ~You know I'm always here for you.~  
  
~Rachel will be here tonight. She will be in a frail frame of mind, when she'll be attacked by the Black Queen...~  
  
~...and you're afraid she'll repeat your mistakes.~  
  
Jean nodded. ~I need you to do to her what you couldn't do to me.~ She drew an image from his memory of a beautiful angel, with a halo of red curls, lying upon the ground, vulnerable. When she was weak, it had been up to the Wolverine to slay Dark Phoenix, but he couldn't bring himself to hurt the woman he loved.  
  
"Jeannie." He came forward, taking her in his arms. "I can't. You created that kid, maybe not with me, but situations could have just as easily turned fate on us. I consider her family just as much as Jubie."  
  
"I know, Logan. But you don't understand how powerful she is; there's too much at stake here. And in any case, she feels pain, but she is beyond death." Jean could see that he was connecting her words in his mind. Phoenix is beyond death. "I need you to remind her of that pain, to wake her from her fury. That's all." She kissed his cheek, fighting to hold back tears. "I wish I could have come under better circumstances. I'm afraid I have to go."  
  
He had to ask one more question before releasing her. "Jean, Rachel said that you would come back." She nodded. "Did you really die, that day on the moon?"  
  
Jean gave a small sigh. "A part of me died that day. And a part of me was reborn. But, no matter how you look at it, I never left my loved ones." She stroked his face affectionately. "I'll always be with you...Now go!"  
  
Logan jerked awake to find himself encased in darkness.  
  
* * *  
  
The Net was an adult amusement park that stood on the bay of New York City. The park (which looked like a giant fishnet, with its intersecting roller coasters) offered children of heart cheap beer, fast rides, and private entertainment at a relatively low price. But tonight, it belonged to Rachel and her gang. It was long after closing time, but they didn't have much trouble getting the main power to turn on. As six glossy racecars sped through the spiraling obstacle course, Jubilee and Alex commentated from a platform high above.  
  
Their voices rang out against the roar of engines. "And it's Sam in the lead, topping off at 140, with his blast on high!"  
  
"Maybe," the young Summers piped, "but Kitty's catching up fast."  
  
Jubilee rolled her eyes and muttered, "It's amazing how fast she can catch up when she phases through all the death-defying challenges." Paige, seated behind the control booth, found a cd she liked and turned on the overhead speakers.  
  
Below, Rachel was right behind Kitty when she heard Mudvayne's "End of All Things to Come" blast into her ears. She was copying her best friend's sly trick and running through the obstacles before her, while occasionally leaving telekinetic mines for the competitors behind her. As she came neck- to-neck with Pryde, Rachel threw her a wink. "You in the mood for a 'Samwhich'?" she yelled.  
  
Kitty gave an evil snicker and nodded, stepping hard on the gas. Rachel followed, her ears pumping with pressure. She turned up her car radio, charging herself with energy as one of her favorite songs pulsed through her body. _And when the whole damn world is dead-there's your fucking peace!_  
  
Suddenly, Sam's car burst into flames just a few feet before her. She saw Kitty's vehicle rush into the rising smoke, and out into safety, where she began to break hard. Rachel put her clutch in and pulled her steering wheel hard to the left, so that her car slid into position beside the wreckage, and slammed on the emergency brake. She got out of the car, assessing the situation like a mission. If she smothered the flames to prevent another gas explosion, she could suffocate Sam...if he was alive. ~Oh, god.~ She tried telepathy instead. Gazing through the disaster, she spotted Kitty pulling her friend through the metal doors of his racecar. Rachel telekinetically lightened the burden, and put a TK shield around the two bodies until they were a few feet before her, lungs heaving with carbon dioxide.  
  
As the rest of the gang pulled up, Rachel felt a familiar voice pierce her psyche. ~Oh, pity. You'd think an explosion that big would've killed him.~  
  
Rachel turned on her heel to come face to face with Selene. But, rather than let her temper control her, she decided she'd handle this more like the cosmic force of infinite power that she was. ~I'm a legend,~ she told herself. ~I can take a jealous little girl.~ She cleared her throat and yelled to her friends. "You guys get back to the Mansion and get Sam to Dr. McCoy."  
  
Bobby started to protest. "But, what about-"  
  
"NOW!" She heard them scurry off and returned her focus with her adversary.  
  
"Silly little Rachel," the Black Queen mocked. "Always concerned for others when she should be concerned for her own well-being."  
  
Rachel gave her a cold stare, the music still ringing through her, now charging her with hatred. _I'm killing every fucking thing until somebody gets the fucking point!_ "You will call me Phoenix."  
  
"Oh, yes," Selene chuckled. "I'd forgotten you've recently discovered your little tie to the firebird. Well, I'd hate to break it to you, since you've obviously gotten it into your head that you're the same all-powerful psi that your lovely mum was, but, you see, your connection is more of an inheritance, really. I mean, sure, you can perform lots of cute little tricks, but you're no match for a witch like myself."  
  
She ignored the entire comment. "Other suitable names include the Black Angel, the Child of Light and Darkness-"  
  
Selene burst out loud with laughter. "Oh, you truly do play a convincing death-dealer, *child*."  
  
Rachel, growing tired, let her heavy jean jacket slip to the floor and kicked it out of the way. "Look, I'd love to exchange more insults, but I have better things to do with my time. So let's get this over with."  
  
* * *  
  
The Blackbird was racing to an unknown location, the radar closing in on Kitty Pryde. Logan had never seen the place in his dream, but he was almost certain it was in New York, and wherever Kitty was, Rachel was sure to be near. As he sped toward the bay, he tried to clear the uncertainties lurking in his mind. He should've kept a closer eye on Rachel. He should've fought harder against Dark Phoenix. He should've alerted the rest of the X- Men and gone in with backup. But something told him it'd be best if no one witnessed what he was about to do.  
  
The plane came to a hair-raising vertical drop, parking above a brilliantly- lit strip of land, and Logan opened the hatch. He leapt onto a metal tower in the center of the structure, plunging his claws in to steady himself. Even with his keen senses, he couldn't see through the smoke below, so he decided to go in blind. He twisted his wrists, so that his claws went with the vertical grain of the metal, rather than against it, and in a second, he was sliding fast down the slick surface, gaining momentum. By the time he saw that the tower was about to end in a platform, he was going way to fast. He twisted his claws against the grain, but didn't stop in time; he came to a crash against the hard asphalt of a racetrack.  
  
It didn't take long for him to come to, and when he did, eight of his students were helping him to his feet. He shook his head clear and waved them away. "Blackbird," he muttered, pointing towards the sky.  
  
Jubilee nodded. "Do you want us to wait?" Logan shook his head and started running in the direction of the flames, his legs stumbling beneath him.  
  
Within seconds, he reached the site of the crash, and his heart caught in his chest at the sight of Rachel in the Dark Phoenix costume, hovering above the Black Queen's corpse.  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTE: And still to come: Rachel and Logan duke it out!! Who will win?!?! Tune in next time! 


	15. A Stagnant Thread of Time

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Much gratitude going out to Thanx4reading, whose reviews I always look forward to. If you guys like Rachel's character, you should really check out these sites: members.shaw.ca/houndmarks/default.htm and askani.precious-illusion.com/ . One centers on Rachel and another is all about the Clan Asakani, which we'll explore in chapters to come. I love Rain; I wish I was as talented as she is!!  
  
616 timeline 08-25-2004 Westchester, New York, United States  
  
Even the air felt silent, as the two stood in a moment of hesitation. Both were fully aware of all that lay in wake of their battle, of the consequences dependent upon the outcome. It was as if the space-time continuum itself were stagnant, groping for its next course. For indeed, time could never resume its function, until this moment, this paramount moment answered the questions looming through eternity.  
  
The angry seventeen-year old felt herself turn to face her enemy. At this point, she was no longer Rachel Summers; her subconscious had given her body over to the Phoenix Force, unwittingly providing the Hound persona with an all-powerful outlet to her rage. She watched on helplessly, as she attacked her own godfather yet again.  
  
Logan was surprised by this new evil, so different from the one he'd faced a little over a year ago. Then, Dark Phoenix had been arrogant, taunting, lusting for devastation. Yet, through Rachel, it knew no pleasure. It gave no speeches before it unleashed its wrath and it gained no delight from its destruction. In fact, it seemed that Dark Phoenix now lashed out against creation more out of rage than malice. But he couldn't think of Phoenix, or Rachel, right now, not if he wanted to live through the encounter.  
  
As the Hound charged forward, she sent out huge sweeps of telekinesis in all directions, letting her anger flow unfettered. Logan preformed several timely acrobatics to avoid the blasts, and landed horizontally upon the tall barricade of the racetrack, his claws supporting him once again. The Hound reached the wall, and hit it with such force that the entire structure collapsed. Thankfully, he'd leapt away the second she'd pulled back her fist, so that most of the debris flew in the opposite direction of him.  
  
He landed upon a long piece of wood, presumably from the Net's main bar. The Hound flew high and pirouetted round to where Logan had fallen. She dropped onto the plank with absolute grace, and took a defensive stance, suddenly craving hand-to-hand combat. And she couldn't have chosen a better opponent. Wolverine wasted no time. He ran forward with a scream, dropping to one knee at the last moment, so that he slid toward her at an amazing speed. But she jumped up, just before he reached her. She gave him a hard kick to the small of the back, catapulting him forward, but he gracefully somersaulted to a stand. The second he pivoted, she'd reached him, and he turned into a fist that nearly shattered his skull. Logan shook his head to clear blacking spots.  
  
Then, pissed, he began to put forth much more effort. He swung for her head, and was blocked, but plunged his extended claws into her abs. She howled in pain and gave him an uppercut to the jaw. He rose from the ground to meet her third charge. And time began to blur, excited and hastily awaiting the pinnacle of the defining moment. There was a punch and a block. A roundhouse, mirrored by a jump kick. A jab. An elbow. A back-handspring. Knee block. Punch. Backhand. Palm thrust. A high kick sent the Hound spiraling onto her back. Raising with a sinister sneer, she gave a spontaneous jump into the sky, and swan dived back toward him. Putting a tk shield around her body, she became a veritable bomb, plunging straight for him. Logan only had time to cross his claws before him in defense.  
  
He became immersed in the Atlantic Ocean, waves biting into his skin at 49° F. Immediately, he looked for something to grab a hold of, something with which to keep above water. His skeleton weighed over 300 pounds with its adamantium lace, and that made it more than a little hard to swim at times. But, as the force of the water slowed his motions considerably, it almost seemed to give speed to the Hound. She flew toward him in a streak of current. In an instant of instinct, Wolverine flexed the muscles at the bend of his forearm, and six metal claws, each a foot long, popped out of his knuckles without a sound.  
  
Just as they did, the current came to a halting stop, and the Hound winced in pain, giving Rachel Summers just enough time to slip into her own body once more. She woke as Logan pulled his claws out of her lungs. He tread water with some difficulty, pulling away to see if he had done the impossible and somehow killed the all-powerful. Her eyes lost their glow and became green again, her face trapped in the grimace of death. Rachel felt his mind sigh with relief, and assumed he'd somehow sensed her cast away the Dark Phoenix's hold over her mind. She came forward for an embrace. Shocked, Logan extended his claws again, sinking them into her heart. He stared cruelly into her eyes, as a fire began to glow within her pupils.  
  
The fire grew, and grew, until it encompassed the entire ocean. Sound and light popped away in one fatal moment. And this time, Rachel knew the death she'd already experienced but had never felt. The space-time continuum changed its course, and rushed past, no longer concerned with this one small moment. There was always another day, another saga, awaiting the next generation.  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Don't worry, it's not the end. Death is never the end for the Phoenix, remember? ;) 


	16. Another Beautiful World Lost

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanx4reading and Tenshi no koneko, thank you for your reviews. (Sorry, Mimic, about the bet. If it makes you feel any better, I was disappointed when I read it, too. Rachel sooo could've won, if she just stayed Phoenix-ed up!) Now, I know those of you who read the comics are going to freak out when Nathan is born to Jean, but remember: it's an alternate timeline. Anything can happen, and actually, this does happen several times that we know of. Sorry that there isn't much concrete detail in this one; I confess I've never actually read a comic with the Beyonder in it, and I can't find anything on him on the net, so I left it brief rather than doing it wrong. In any case, I hope it didn't ruin the chapter completely.  
  
835 timeline 03-20-2017 Westchester, New York, United States  
  
Death was far beyond anything she had ever imagined. When she'd first heard of her own demise, she had envisioned clichés of dark tunnels and out- of- body experiences. She'd never thought that death would look like a starburst of infinite light, nor sound like a thousand individual heartbeats, muffled by a vast blanket of space. But, as before, Rachel's death was not the end of her story. Fate, maybe, pulled her from the depths of a bottomless ocean, or perhaps she'd willed herself into existence, through the power of the Phoenix. Some believe that the Phoenix Force itself had blown breath back into her, without any consideration of her own will. Still others speculate that a third party, such as the rogues Cable, Bishop, or Nate Grey, might have manipulated the original order of time, in order to ensure the formation of the Clan Asakani. In any case, her rebirth was, without doubt, a miracle. Yet, when Rachel awoke, she did not consider herself blessed. She knew only fury. And she might have easily resorted to the Hound again, had it not been for...  
  
The first thing she heard was a feeble cry, which quickly grew into a wail of protest. As she regained her vision, Rachel found herself in the Medlab of the X-Men headquarters, hidden underground, below Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Her beloved family, biological and extended, was crowded around a standard hospital bed, and Dr. Hank McCoy, the blue-furred Beast, wore a white robe, gloves, and a surgeon's cap.  
  
"Okay, Jean," he said softly, "we just need one more push." Lying upon the bed, with a sheet over her lower body, Jean Grey contracted her lower abdominal muscles, contorting her face in pain. Her cringe faded into a smile, and she lay back against a long pillow in satisfaction. Hank moved to a sink for a few seconds. When he returned to Jean's side, he held a baby in his arms, which he wrapped in a blanket and laid across its mother's chest.  
  
Jean calmed her child with a soft telepathic embrace, and a newborn Nathan Christopher Charles Summers quieted his wail to a coo. His father, Scott, put his arm around his mother's shoulders, and stroked his smooth face with a thumb weathered by years of warfare. He cleared his throat and sang one of his favorite verses to the son he never thought he'd be able to fit into his life. He sang a verse of hope and love, and gave an internal prayer of thanks.  
  
"Welcome to the planet. Welcome to existence..."  
  
As Rachel watched the scene before her, completely unnoticed, she grew ashamed of herself. How could she have forgotten the sound of her father's singing? How could she have forgotten Ororo's smile, or Xavier's tears? "...I dare you to move like today never happened..." She looked around at her loved ones. She had once lived the life that her half-brother just began, also sheltered by the love of Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Charles Xavier, Ororo Munroe, Hank McCoy, John Grey, Elaine Grey, Sarah Grey, Christopher Summers, Alex Summers, Kitty Pryde, Warren Worthington, Bobby Drake, Lorna Dane, Reed Richards, Sue Richards, and, of course, a man known only as Logan.  
  
Scott looked up from his family and to the man that had raised him. "Professor?"  
  
"What is it that worries you, Scott?"  
  
"Well, I know Jean and I told you that you'd be the godfather of our children when we got married, but-well, you are his grandfather, as far as anyone in this room is concerned."  
  
Xavier smiled at his son. "Scott, I know what you have in mind," he said. "I think it entirely appropriate. But you shouldn't be asking me this question."  
  
Scott turned to his teammate, who stood by his side. "Logan, would you be Nathan's godfather?" Wolverine nodded, silently choking back tears, and gave Summers a strong hug.  
  
She felt foolish. When she saw the darkness of mankind's hatred, she forgot its beauty and strength. Angered, she left mankind behind entirely, and in doing so, only added to the deepening shadow. "...Maybe redemption has stories to tell. Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell..." No more. In that instant, Rachel made a vow to protect the light of man at all costs, and above all, she would protect her baby brother.  
  
Suddenly, the world turned on its axis. Rachel traveled through years of time in seconds, and saw a holocaust of absolute proportions. She saw flames, ruins, corpses. Rachel pulled away from the horror, and found herself back at her old home, her screams unheard by those around her. Gasping, she tried to make sense of what she'd seen. One image stood out from the others, as a killer stands out from a sea of his victims. That image was the Beyonder, a creature of immense power, whose only joy in life was death.  
  
Rachel Summers opened herself to the Phoenix Force once more, this time with a clear mind and a full heart, calling upon the legendary entity for a single act of justice. In a shot of light and flame, she left the Medlab, the X-Mansion, New York, the US, Earth, and the Milky Way. She stopped in a galaxy far from her home, and sent out a telepathic scream that transcended light-years in a matter of moments.  
  
Just as she suspected, the Beyonder followed her cry, seeking a source of despair to quench his greedy thirst. The fly was heading straight for the widow's web. Rachel gathered her thoughts on the stars and planets around her, focusing mainly upon vast untamable space between them. She began to bend matter, and, though she didn't understand how it was possible, she found herself bending the absence of matter as well. Space became her weapon, and the Beyonder her target. For once, she found a way to pay for her past crimes against humanity. She had no idea it would lead to another crime, and another beautiful world lost.  
  
* * *  
  
Timestream  
  
Rachel knew exactly where she was before she ever opened her eyes or regained her telepathy. She remembered her struggle with the Beyonder. She remembered when things got out of control. She'd meant to create a weapon, and she had; she'd created a black hole. She'd meant to destroy the Beyonder, and she had; she'd destroyed the entire timeline. She'd broken her vow only minutes after she'd made it, and in doing so, she not only betrayed and embarrassed her brother's name, but killed him, and everyone she ever loved. The cycle had come full-circle, yet again. No matter how hard she tried to be a better person, her good intentions inevitably led to devastation. She wept. And wept. And wept... 


	17. Plague of Despair

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanx4reading and Tenshi no Koneko, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy lives to read my work. I know the last few chapters have been very prophetic and slow, but bear with me. Prophesy is sort of everything that Rachel's destiny is based on, and besides, I promise the next one is very action-packed.  
  
Timestream  
  
The second visit to the Watchers' sanctuary was far more comfortable than the first. Rachel felt as if she was in her element, here among the demigods of the universe, watching creation from afar. True, those demigods were about to place a heavy sentence upon her head, but they nonetheless made her feel welcome for the whole of her stay, and treated her as their equal. She spent hours in solitude, somewhere between lamentation and deliberation, and when she got up from the bed prepared for her, she was greeted by the Watchers. They calmed her mind, lightened her heart, and showed her, without saying a single word, how to observe.  
  
Now, she sat upon the cold floor, legs crossed and eyes closed, looking out telepathically at the world around her. While the timestream looked much like space to the eye, it looked more like an ocean of darting sparks to the mind. She followed one such spark into a recess. And there, she found treasures beyond anything she'd ever seen. She was drawn into one great epic after another, watching individuals overcome tragedy, and families share moments of love, while whole civilizations united to fight against great powers of evil. She also found devastation. Rachel closed her mind from the sight and opened her eyes. The sparkle transformed into a blue galaxy, spinning upon a silver star that rotated from one direction to the next in small, spastic movements.  
  
Rachel felt two wide eyes staring into her. She turned to see a Watcher observing her with interest. ~Do you see everything?~ she asked. ~All the good and all the bad? Or can you shut it off when you like?~  
  
The Watcher chuckled softly, and entered her mind with a buzzing voice. ~We do not see as you do. The universe does not flow in moments of good and bad. It is all at once, forever good and forever evil.~ As he spoke, he gave her a sliver of his vision, so that she viewed all of time and space in an instant. She couldn't comprehend what she saw, but she felt the value of humanity sinking into her, and she began to understand the purpose of the Watchers. They were the constant whisper that rang through the cosmos, reminding creation of its own worth.  
  
~Come, child.~ He motioned to the Great Hall, and she followed, no longer comfortable. She remembered the last judgment that came to her from this place. The doors were shut behind her, and she knelt before the 9 as before. But this time, she didn't have to wait for her verdict.  
  
The center Watcher rose immediately, and gave Rachel a cold stare. ~We have decided your fate. You are a cataclysmic force in this universe; that much is certain. Yet, thus far, you have shown yourself to be a force of evil, not the Child of Light and Darkness that you were prophesized to be. As a part of the Phoenix, you are far too powerful to continue as a part of creation. You have upset the balance of the universe, and so you will no longer be a part of it.~ She inhaled a deep breath, as he came to his final summary. ~Rachel Summers, you are banished from creation, damned to wander the rest of your days, until you have reset the balance you so recklessly disturbed.~ His stare softened slightly, and he sighed. ~Never has so harsh a word fallen upon such a beautiful creature from the mouth of this board. Go now, and do with yourself as you wish.~  
  
Rachel rose and bowed to them, as before. She turned and dashed out of the room as fast as she could, running at light-speed, through the unseen metal of the sanctuary, and into the timestream, to be alone with her grief.  
  
* * *  
  
61 timeline 10-01-4004 BC (uncharted area of modern-day) Finland  
  
She had flown through the timestream for nearly two full days, ignoring the pain of lactic acid searing through her muscles. She eventually fainted and fell into a star system that turned out to be the 61 timeline. When she woke, Rachel found herself in a vast, barren desert of sleet and ice. Numb, within and without, she got up from her blanket of snow, and began to walk a long journey, not sure why she continued to pick up her feet, or where they would take her. She didn't know that it mattered anymore. 


	18. Child of Light and Darkness

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okay, so I released this one at the same time as Chapter 17. It's just that it was so depressing! (and pretty short) So I gave you a treat. You'll notice I spent six chapters on her stay in Mainstream Earth with the X-Men, but I only wrote one and a half chapters about her days of wandering. In the four months she stayed in ME, a lot happened, while she basically only goes through two stages during the 958 years she wandered through time: bitter, self-loathing Rachel, and the Child of Light and Darkness that she was meant to be. Okay, I'm done with my speech. I hope you like this one!  
  
616 timeline 11-03-2004 Bury, Manchester, England  
  
The city street was full of cars and busses, rolling slowly over the beginnings of winter's frost, while hundreds of people lined the sidewalk, shoving at each other impatiently. A toddler tagged along behind his mother, pulled by a leash that ran from her wrist to the harness on his chest. He looked up, and a tiny tear in the sky opened before his eyes. A young woman fell out of the rip, flying upon wings of flame. The little boy pointed, and said, "Angel, Mommy! Angel." His mother tugged gently on his leash. "Yes, sweetheart," she sighed, preoccupied.  
  
As Rachel Summers landed upon a cement rooftop, she absorbed the thoughts of those around her. In the alley below, a homeless teenager by the name of Curtis was being brutally beaten by a dozen of his peers for a loaf of bread. Curtis worked at the shelter on Hedgerow Lane for food and board. After hearing that his estranged father was alive, he'd decided to bring him the bread, in hopes of inspiring within his dad a change of lifestyle. Yet, the other kids of the neighborhood had seen the brown bag under his arm, and they were prepared to kill the "puny twerp" for the bounty, if needed.  
  
Across the street, a young mutant named Maggie had just witnessed her father's murder. The six-year-old was destined to become the leader of a special interest group that would fight the MRA and help prevent the Mutant Massacre. However, after the traumatic experience she was about to endure, she'd instead choose a life of crime, assassinating several anti-mutant politicians, and unwittingly fuel the persecution of her kind.  
  
Around the corner, a war was brewing between a gang that called themselves the Urchins and a huge law firm, Brewer & Silverstein. The firm's main client, criminal Johnny Gudde, had killed one of the Urchins. Now, over 60 men, women, and teenagers stood in a face-off that was about to erupt, killing all but 3 of them. Among the casualties would be an Urchin named Shane, who was supposed to become one of the first non-mutant mutant activists, and Ofra, an old woman who happened to walk into the firm's lobby at the wrong moment.  
  
Rachel took a deep breath, pulled her mind back inside of herself, and dived off the roof's ledge. She landed upon one of the neighborhood thugs, sending an electric shock through his central nervous system. Using his body as a bat, she threw him into two of his buddies. She delivered a powerful optic blast to another teen, who was on top of Curtis. As he fell forward, she grabbed Curtis with a gentle blanket of TK, pulling him behind her and out of harm's way. She put a shield around him and his drunken father, and turned back to the other bullies. She'd moved so fast, they just now noticed her presence. Three came toward her in a rush.  
  
Moving at the speed of light, she danced circles around them, and left all three twitching upon the ground from a lethal karate-chop to the neck. As two more charged, she jumped five feet into the air and placed her boots upon their chests. She gave a push of amazing force, sending them flying backwards into brick. She flipped back to the opposite wall, bouncing off like a pinball to the final teenager. She hit him with such momentum that he died upon impact.  
  
Not stopping for an instant, she lifted her shield from the boy, and ran headlong into moving traffic. She phased through the vehicles all around her, which were honking noisily in protest, and kept running, straight through the door of the apartment where Maggie lived. Before the vile thief bending over her had even realized that Rachel had entered, she stabbed him through the brain stem with a telekinetic dagger, and vaporized his body. She ran over to the young girl, whose underwear was torn and bloody, and sent her into a smooth slumber. In an instant, she touched Maggie and her father, healing them both of their wounds, and erasing their terrible memories from existence.  
  
She continued running, through several buildings, streets, and alleyways, invisible to everyone she passed, until she came to a huge skyscraper of glass and metal. Ofra was at the door, about to pull it open, and so pull the trigger of every skittish character inside. Rachel ran to her, and, just as she swung the door open, wrapped her arms around her, forcing her to the ground. Bullets, scrap-metal, and glass hit her back without doing any damage. Ofra, scared by the stranger, crawled away from her and ran to call the police. Rachel walked through what had once been a window into the building's lobby.  
  
Several of the machine guns turned toward her, and she created a magnetic field around herself, so that the numerous bullets swirled around her, shaping into the form of a phoenix. She hurled them at the firm's gunmen, and a little more than a dozen of her foes dropped to the ground. She gave a pull, and every handgun, rifle, and machine gun that fired from the right side of the room flew from their owner's hands and to the Urchins' feet on the left. She stood between the two parties, drawing a line in the sand, and making her intentions known. She turned to Johnny Gudde's murderous lackeys and spread her arms wide. In a single sweep of telekinesis, she shoved them into the wall at 80 mph, most of them dead upon impact.  
  
She turned to the Urchins, who backed away in fear. She sent out a mute telepathic message to them, warning them that if they did not choose a different lifestyle for themselves, they'd die before they ever hit 21 years. She sent with it a single picture. Each of the teenagers before her saw themselves dead upon the streets, a nameless body, a statistic. She knew that most of them would never break the cycle they were born into, but she also foresaw the few, Shane included, who would make a choice for life.  
  
Rachel teleported out of the lobby and onto the building's roof as she left their mind. When she looked up, she was surprised to see someone waiting for her. A tall, muscular man with silver hair looked down upon her, his crystal blue eyes worn with worry.  
  
"Rachel," Cable said with a tired sigh, "how are you making this magic?"  
  
* * *  
  
616 timeline 11-03-2004 Woodbridge, Suffolk, England  
  
He was starting to worry that he'd come too late, that Rachel had already lost her fight with the Phoenix Force and was no longer human. She hadn't said a word since he'd met her in Manchester, and she had kept her mind closed from him as well. Now, as they drove through the circle driveway of the Braddock Manor, she finally showed a hint of emotion. She was panicked.  
  
He grasped her hand, and she jerked. She hadn't been touched by another being for almost a millennia, and she certainly didn't feel like being consoled at this particular moment. "Rachel," he said calmly, "this is a safe haven."  
  
~They know me here!~ she spat at him. ~You had no right to bring me here. I'm not even supposed to *be* here!~  
  
"Yes, you are," he answered, keeping his voice calm  
  
~I'm exiled from creation!! Does that mean nothing to you?! You're violating sacred law. I won't allow~  
  
He cut her off. "Rachel, your memory is infinite. Think back."  
  
She shut her mouth and threw him a confused glare. She scanned his mind to find a single sentence engraved before her. ~Rachel Summers, you are banished from creation, damned to wander the rest of your days, until you have reset the balance you so recklessly disturbed.~ The Watchers' words burned shame into her, even a thousand years later.  
  
Cable took her hand again. "You've reset the balance. It's taken you more deeds than a single man can count, but you've done it. The Watchers have lifted you from exile." He could see his words taking effect in her eyes, but they didn't ease all her fears. "Come on," he said, pulling her with him toward the great wooden doors. She followed reluctantly, afraid of this new world and its familiar faces. She didn't even deserve a safe haven. What if she lost control in M.E.; what if she destroyed the proverbial center of the universe? Were a few nights of rest worth another dozen lifetimes of reparation? 


	19. The Rise of Excalibur

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Much love going out to Tenshi no Koneko and thanx4reading for your comments. Keep 'em coming! Enjoy.  
  
616 timeline 04-29-2004 (uncharted area of) Nevada, United States  
  
She was flying. She'd always loved the feel of the wind tousling her hair, whipping her clothes against her frame. She felt weightless, despite the metal horse she carried between her thighs. True, the motorcycle, which weighed close to 1000 pounds, was no BMX bike, but, with the help of some subtle TK, she jumped each dune with ease, and even managed a few stomach- twisting flips.  
  
A bullet bit Rachel in the shoulder, and she shook off her daydream to concentrate on the task at hand. She came crashing back to the desert sand. In front of her, three Hummers were swerving in and out of complex formations, trying to shake their tail. Each of the cars was equipped with two expert gunmen, who tried in vain to train Uzis upon her. Rachel twisted and turned to dodge each spray of gunfire, kicking up dust to confuse her enemy. She could've put up a telekinetic shield to save energy, but she like to show off.  
  
Summers used her most delicate measure of telekinesis to unhinge the spark plugs of the two Hummers closest to her, causing sparks to fly beneath the vehicles' hoods. Opening the oil tanks, she gave the sparks fuel, and effectively ignited fire near each of the engines. As soon as they saw the flames rising from the front of their cars, the henchmen inside leapt out to roll upon the ground. However, the machines exploded mere feet from them, catching the six bodies on fire. As she sped past, Rachel sent a wall of sand onto them, suffocating the flames.  
  
She accelerated, sending the bike's engine from a growl to a roar. It had taken her two months of diligent effort to telekinetically construct a replica of her father's precious '04 Valkyrie Rune, and it had been worth every minute. She leaned forward, her chest constricting, her body heat rising. The engine was now screaming at her, pleading for mercy. Rachel was unrelenting. She could fix whatever damage she did to the pistons later, so she refused to hold back the growing urge for speed, for danger, for annihilation. Lost yet again in her own fervor, she didn't notice the heat-seeking missile shooting toward her until it burst into her back.  
  
She tumbled forward, somersaulting in a sea of dirt, until she came to rest in a lifeless heap. Or so it seemed.  
  
Rachel had survived the explosion without a scratch, but her Valkyrie was completely destroyed. She lay still for almost two full minutes, gathering her rage, pocketing it until it could be most sufficiently utilized. She looked around to see where the rocket launcher had come from, and spied a four-story government building almost two miles away. As the car finally turned around and made its way toward her, she heard Bolivar Trask from deep within the sterile halls, commanding the men inside the vehicle to "finish her off."  
  
Her anger almost bolt out of her in the form of an attack against the Hummer, but she had to restrain herself. Inside that vehicle was a disk packed with information about the members of several mutant leagues, including the X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, X-Factor, and the newly formed Excalibur, of which she was the field leader. Finally, the SUV came to a stop a few yards from her crumpled form. Cautiously, one of the gunmen stepped out and crept toward her, his gun aimed ominously at her. He fired one, two, three, four shots, to ensure that she was dead.  
  
Each bullet ricocheted off her skin. In order to keep the man and the car within her reach, she created a psychic illusion in which the bullets penetrated her skin with a spray of blood. The henchman, now standing right above her, turned back to the driver of the Hummer with a nod. While both men gave a sigh of relief, Rachel created a tiny plasma sphere. When the gunman turned back around, she had the glowing bomb in her hand, inches form his face.  
  
She glared. "You *do* realize I had to make every *square inch* of that beautiful machine out of *thin air*?"  
  
The sphere exploded, and the man's entrails flew in all directions. The Hummer started to pull away, but she was already inside, moving at the speed of light. She grabbed the titanium case she needed, leaving another plasma sphere upon the floorboard, and dashed out in a split second. As she walked away, the machine burst into flames, sending debris through the humid air. She laughed to herself, hearing Trask two miles away, screaming for someone to "find out what the hell that was and which freak group it works with!" They could search the CIA database for the next hundred years, but they couldn't find someone who never existed.  
  
Rachel telekinetically bathed herself and donned a pair of black vinyl pants, a red tank top with a golden phoenix emblem, and a black, floor- length, leather trench coat, as well as her father's signature ruby quartz shades. She glanced back at the wreckage behind her with a sigh, and murmured, "Some people have no respect for art."  
  
* * *  
  
616 timeline 04-29-2004 Woodbridge, Suffolk, England  
  
Rachel opened the large, wooden door to her bedroom, announcing her presence. "I wouldn't touch the bottom drawer if I were you."  
  
Logan, who had been idly looking through her bedroom while he waited for her return from America, pulled his hand away from her dresser. "How'd you know I was here?" he asked. Placing her sunglasses upon the nightstand, she threw him an impetuous look, as if to say, What don't I know?  
  
He closed the top drawer. "Is there a reason you have two dressers and a closet full of cd's and guns, but no clothes?"  
  
She smiled. "This is all I ever wear. I'm not a priss, I guess." He chuckled and they settled upon the bed. In the months that she'd stayed at the Braddock Manor, Rachel's relationship with Logan had healed and grown. Though they lived in separate countries, they made it a point to visit each other every week. They had gone through a lot of similar experiences in their long, worn lives, and both of them got some semblance of peace from opening up to each other, though neither had ever thought such a feat possible.  
  
After several minutes of pleasant teasing, Logan's face grew somber, and it was obvious he was mewling through some internal battle. "What's wrong?" was Rachel's simple query, though she knew the answer.  
  
"Things have taken a bizarre turn over the past couple of weeks," he admonished. She didn't offer anything else, so he went on. "Well, that's actually the reason I'm here, you see. I'm supposed to tell all of you something pretty important, but I don't even know where to begin, and I figured you-" He looked at her a moment before rushing on with an intense speed. "I figured you would know what to say, since you've obviously had a long time to digest Jean's resurrection."  
  
She smirked. "Wow. You really are a disturbed little man, aren't you?" He gave a pleading look, and she laughed, trying to lighten his mood. "Don't worry so much! Jean is fine."  
  
"I didn't say Jean wasn't fine," he grumbled.  
  
"No, but it's what you're thinking. I know you're not buying the whole died-on-the-moon-living-in-a-cocoon-Phoenix-clone-story, but really, she's back to her old self."  
  
"Are you admitting that she was ever not her old self?"  
  
She rolled her eyes. No one knew for sure if Jean had died upon the moon or not. If she hadn't, as she claimed, she had actually been in a cocoon at the bottom of the Hudson River during the entire Dark Phoenix catastrophe, and the Phoenix Force had made a clone of her. If it had been her, however, and she could reconstruct herself after death, the world was certainly not a safe place anymore. "Logan," she said soothingly, "would it make any difference?"  
  
He shrugged in frustration. "Of course not. I'll love Jeannie forever, no matter what she does. It's just that, no matter how much I love her, I'm not blind to her faults, like all those maniacs back at the Mansion." He paused. "But I still love her." And so he had hit the basis of why this was so hard for him. Phoenix was about to marry Scott, and Logan would never betray Cyclops, despite his love for Jean, so he was now doomed to live out his days pining for the woman he could never touch.  
  
Rachel rubbed Wolverine's shoulder sympathetically. He loved both men equally, and understood the depth of both relationships: Jean and Scott, and Jean and Logan. She tried again to lift her uncle's spirits. "Yeah, I heard about the infamous kiss you gave Jean on the battlefront. I mean, I always knew you had balls, but right there, in front of Scott, and Warren, and everybody!"  
  
His eyes grew wide. "How the hell did you find out about-?" He let it go with a sigh, and gave her a suspicious look. "Exactly how much do you know, anyway?"  
  
She smirked. "Let's see... Jean came back from the dead and joined X- Factor without telling anyone. Madelyne Pryor found out that Mr. Sinister had cloned her after Jean, and went all psycho, becoming the Goblin Queen. Jean found out about Scott's marriage to little Miss Maddy, and went pretty crazy herself, while poor Scott is nearly insane with guilt and regret. Madelyne seduces Scott's young brother Alex, of course, only using him to hurt Scott. But that's not enough, so she also decides to kill her and Scott's son, Nathan. But the day is saved, by X-Factor, both teams of the X-Men, and old X-Men Beast and Angel. Now, Maddy is dead, by Jean's hand. Jean and Scott are set to be married, and Jean is planning on adopting Nathan as her own son..." She trailed. "Am I missing anything?"  
  
Logan eyed her, astonished. "Have you known all this all along?"  
  
"I've known all this since I was about five years old."  
  
He shook his head, baffled, and looked away sadly. "What am I gonna do?"  
  
She placed her hand upon his cheek, and made him look at her. "Life goes on, I promise."  
  
Just then, the door swung open, and a blonde with long, pointed ears stepped in with a load of laundry. "Oh, uh..." She looked from Rachel to Logan and back again, apologetically. "I didn't mean to interrupt; I'll come back later."  
  
"No, Meggan, it's okay," Summers said, getting up to help her with the towels. "You didn't interrupt anything." Logan stood and threw a distasteful look at the girl. Meggan smiled uncomfortably and closed the door behind her. Rachel came back from the adjoined bathroom, resisting the urge to laugh at the notion that anyone would believe her and Wolverine an item. Seeing the look on his face, she sobered. "Listen," she told him, "I'll give the news to the rest of the team. You don't have to stay."  
  
He considered the offer and nodded. "Yeah, why not? I mean, you know the story better than most of us that were there." She hugged him, and he slung his leather jacket over his shoulder. "Well, I guess I'll see you at the wedding then." He started to leave, but turned back. "Hey, can I ask you something?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Do you know anything about the wedding from your reality? You know, did Scott and I get in a fight or anything? Was I even there?" Ah, Rachel thought to herself. So he's considering not attending.  
  
"You really wanna know?" she asked. He nodded. "You were the best man."  
  
He tried bitterly to hold back his chuckle, though in vain. "Figures," he muttered, as he walked out the door. 


	20. The Verdict

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey, everyone. Remember me? I'm so sorry that I haven't been working on my story. I had a beautiful baby boy back in April, and he kind of took over my life for a while there. But I'm back now, and prepared to finish what I started. Because decided to not let us insert symbols into our fics anymore (grrrrr), I'm using lines to indicate a skip in time and all telepathy is italicized. Thank you, Thanx4reading, for your review, if you even remember posting! ;)  
  
616 timeline 03-29-2005 Westchester, New York, United States  
  
The X-Mansion was always unusually extravagant for a school, and its residents had grown used to frequent, elaborate celebrations of all kinds. But when Scott Summers and Jean Grey got married, the event resembled a red- carpet Hollywood award show more than a wedding. Looking around the enormous ballroom, Rachel felt strangely normal. Ornate crystal chandeliers showered the reception in light. A life-sized ice sculpture, crafted by Bobby Drake, stood upon a tall platform in the middle of the 400 guest tables, depicting Scott and Jean holding each other and looking into each other's eyes dreamily. Huge, velvet banners of midnight blue and gold streamed the walls decoratively. Though she had become something of a celebrity since she joined Excalibur's ranks, her fame was nothing compared to many of the honored guests. Glancing over at the table to her left, Rachel's heart gave a sudden drop at the sight of Franklin Richards. The 12-year old blonde was seated between his parents, Reed and Sue, looking bored. Noticing her psychic presence, he looked up at her with mild interest. She winked, and turned away to check her watch.  
  
In exactly six minutes, she'd be leaving this world forever. She looked across the room at Captain Britain's little sister, Betsy. Betsy, also called Psylocke, was speaking to Logan in a hushed voice, worry etched into her face. When Wolverine gave her a grim shake of the head, she turned away, her long, violet locks swishing.  
  
Rachel got up and walked over to Logan, trying in vain to ignore the many eyes that followed her skintight cocktail dress. She leaned her back against the wall next to her godfather and whispered, "10 bucks says Braddock's hair falls in her punch before the night is over."  
  
Logan gave her a sideways look. "I know you?"  
  
"It's me, you dork," Rachel said with a laugh. She was unrecognizable, as she had changed her facial features dramatically.  
  
He sniffed the air briefly and smiled. "Didn't wanna show up looking exactly like the bride?" he asked. When she nodded, he grinned disbelievingly. "So now you can shape-shift. Does your list of talents ever end?"  
  
She changed the subject. "Good to see you're not hiding in your room."  
  
"I'm also not the best man."  
  
"You look good," she told him.  
  
He threw her an angry frown. "I look damn uncomfortable and you know it." He looked her over quickly and added as an afterthought, "But you're beautiful. You look—"  
  
"Just like my mother," Rachel cut in. "I know."  
  
The murmur of conversation that had been swimming through the room erupted into applause, and the 2 turned to see the dance floor parting. In the center stood Jean, who was telekinetically lifting Professor Charles Xavier out of his wheelchair, so that he was able to walk over to her. As they began to dance, every occupant in the ballroom became entranced. Rachel took this as an opportunity to slip outside unnoticed.  
  
She was the only person that knew that Captain Britain, her friend and teammate, was caught in the timestream, trapped by a cosmic force that called itself the Blackhole. Braddock would be stranded for eternity, if Rachel didn't trade her own life for his. But the Blackhole had placed a time limit on her rescue, and she had to act now, on the most important day of her parents' lives. She closed the heavy oaken doors behind her cautiously and headed for the lobby. But to her surprise, a tall man in a deep blue tuxedo was waiting for her on the marble floor.  
  
It was Scott Summers. He flashed her a perfect smile, and asked, "You're leaving so soon?"  
  
Rachel was almost aching with frustration. She'd been waiting for more than 10 centuries to speak to her father, but this was not the time! "I'm afraid so," she said shakily. "Congratulations. I think you and Jean will be happy together."  
  
As she marched past him, he caught her by the arm and wheeled her around. "Jean told me who you are," he said plainly. She stood still, searching for words, and he continued. "She told me that you're our daughter, though from an alternate reality. She also told me that you are possessed by the Phoenix Force, and have been for the past 1,000 years. She said that you're going to leave to save Brian Braddock by sacrificing yourself. She than told me that you're going to leave without ever saying a word to either of us."  
  
"I—" Rachel stammered for a second.  
  
"You don't have to say anything," Scott said reassuringly. "But I have something to say to you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I believed Madelyne Pryor over you last year. I'm sorry that I didn't realize who you were. And I'm sorry that I haven't acted more like your dad than your enemy." He paused, unsure whether to press on. "I also want you to know that Jean and I are both very proud of you." He pulled her into an embrace and kissed the top of her head affectionately. After what seemed to be 30 minutes of serenity, Summers released his daughter and looked into her shining eyes for a second. "Now," he said, taking a more solid voice, "go do your thing."  
  
Rachel turned, but rounded on him again, giving him a peck on the cheek before running out the huge glass doors and jumping into flight. She felt like she could do anything. _Even find an unknown reality, take on a seemingly invincible force, rescue a friend, and transport that friend back home, all in less than a minute._

* * *

Timestream  
  
Waking with a start, Rachel felt herself roll and fall about four feet, to come crashing down upon a very cold, hard linoleum floor. But when she opened her eyes, the metal beneath her was clear, and she saw, not a shiny silver substance, but an infinite void of sparkling, swirling galaxies. _Realities, _she reminded herself. _I'm in the timestream_. She tried to remember the events of the past 24 hours. Braddock was safe in Mainstream Earth. The Blackhole no longer existed. She'd been almost drained of power. She'd come to the Watchers' ward, desperately seeking refuge. She looked up, to see a particularly small Watcher looking into her eyes patiently. Donning a purple robe, this Watcher was one of the 9.  
  
_Come, child_, his voice hummed in her head. She hopped up, instantly rejuvenated by her tie to the Phoenix Force, and followed him into the Great Hall, where she'd already received punishment twice. But she couldn't think of anything she'd done wrong this time.  
  
Inside, she knelt before the council, waiting for them to deliberate and address her. Yet, to her surprise, the center Watcher stood immediately and entered her mind. _This board has been watching you, Rachel Summers. It has concluded that you have indeed become the Child of Light and Darkness that you were prophesized to be.  
_  
Rachel waited for more, but all of the 9 characters before her simply looked back at her. _Am I free to return to my reality?_ she asked.  
  
The standing Watcher smiled, and Summers almost felt like pinching herself to check that she was awake. She'd never seen a Watcher smile. He entered her mind again._ When this board banished you, it was a verdict, not a sentence. It was acknowledgement of your evil. The Watchers could not keep you from your homeland if they wanted._


	21. The Dark Age of Mutants

AUTHOR'S NOTE:Thank you, Thanx4reading, for your faithful reviews. You don't know how much they motivate me with stories like this that go longer than I expect them to. Hope you likey!!

241 timeline

10-01-2046

(uncharted area of modern-day) America

Summers returned home to find that the 241 timeline was nothing like what she remembered of her childhood. True, this reality was still in tact, as her existence had been erased, but it was an empty world, to say the least.

100's of years after Rachel's time, the Egyptian mutant-cyborg, En Sabah Nur, also called Apocalypse, took command over all the Earth. With his survival-of-the-fittest policy, he introduced an era of crime and poverty to humans and mutants alike. As expected, natural selection favored the mutants. But some would say the humans were lucky to have died, rather than live through "The Dark Age".

Now 4 years into Apocalypse's reign, Rachel scavenged for signs of life throughout her world. She searched endlessly, soaring 1,000's of feet above what had once been America. After almost 3 full days of travel, she spotted a cluster of androids running through the forest, training laser-aim rifles upon trees, obviously looking for some hiding prey. She sped forward, to find 24 women sprinting desperately. Excited, Rachel lowered her altitude to get a better view. 1 of the women stopped abruptly, resting her hands on her knees and spitting a large amount of blood to her side with a grimace. "Sanctity," she hissed toward her right, "we must stop! We can't keep this up for long."

A teenage girl, whom Summers assumed to be Sanctity, shook her head, panting. "If we stop, and Apocalypse's forces reach us, we'll never be able to resist." The rest of the females circled around them.

"'If,' yes," the first woman retorted. "But, there is no 'if' in this route. We will die of exhaustion. Come, we can stay by the riverbank; there'll be plenty of game. Just 1 night, and then we can start again at dawn, with renewed energy."

The teenager shook her head. "Dead men have no energy. Replenish yourselves with thoughts of the Chosen One. He would not wa—" But before she could finish her sentence, the robot assassins had caught up with the group, and began unleashing an attack of lasers and plasma rifles upon the small troupe. The massacre was astounding. In the short moments it took Rachel to come to a landing among the warfare, 5 or 6 women had already been slain. They were greatly outnumbered, and the androids were more efficient than even the Sentinels.

Rachel concentrated a small TK shield around each of the humans in her midst, while showering the clearing in an immense haze of light and smoke, which looked much like the explosion of an H-Bomb. Once the blinding ray of light had dimmed, she turned to Sanctity, who she assumed the leader of the group. "Are you okay?"

But the girl simply stared at her, eyes wide in shock, her mouth half open. "How did you do that?" she asked in awe. She didn't even look mildly shocked at the corpse lying a few feet from her.

Rachel pointed at it. "Don't you want to examine your losses before we begin introductions?"

Sanctity glanced down with a shrug. "She has only been amongst us for a few days. I knew upon our first meeting that she would not last long. I don't believe I could tell you her name if I tried."

241 timeline

10-02-2046

(uncharted area of modern-day) America

Sanctity turned out to be Tonya Trask, daughter of the Bolivar Trask who'd invented the Sentinels. She and Rachel exchanged life-stories over firelight for hours, well past midnight, as they had volunteered for watch duty, while other women slept. Trask's experiences were somewhat similar to Summers', and they got along unnaturally well. Within 10 minutes of introducing themselves, they'd already started to finish each other's thoughts.

As she finally summarized how she'd come to the 241 timeline, Rachel looked from the heart of the flames before her to Sanctity's face. They were both lying upon sleeping bags that Rachel had formatted from thin air. Tonya, who kept nestling herself deeper into the bag, looked like she hadn't slept upon anything soft in years. She narrowed her eyes in thought. "So what are you going to do now?" she asked. "Will you try to go back in time and prevent Apocalypse's rise to power?"

Rachel shook her head. "That never produces clear results. Besides, the X-Men have tried it numerous times in M.E. and Apocalypse inevitably comes to power anyway. It's almost like fate." She surveyed Sanctity, measuring her confidence, before saying, "I think I'm going to try to fight him."

"Fight Apocalypse?" Tonya bellowed. "You are insane!"

"No," Summers said calmly. "And you're going to help me."

Sanctity's face dropped into an incredulous gape. "Apparently, you don't hear very well. I told you, my only mutant ability is timetravel, and I have no control over it. None whatsoever!"

"From what I can tell, you've survived 18 years of scraping an existence for yourself in this cold world. And you don't realize it yet, because your abilities are still undeveloped for some reason, but you are actually a psi."

"How would you know that?" snapped Trask.

"I know everything," came Rachel's smug reply, and Tonya rolled her eyes with a smile.

"Alright, hypothetically," she suggested, "should I decide to help you, how would you do it? You may be invincible, but Apocalypse cannot die either. It does no good to simply fight him; we'd need to kill him."

"Yeah, I've actually been thinking about that since I came here." Rachel looked into the fire for thought. She'd only known Trask for a short while, but she felt secure with her nonetheless—so secure, in fact, that she was willing to risk the biggest mission of her life in order to recruit the girl. "In the late 19th century," she said, "there was a young mutant by the name of Destiny. She had suffered a sudden loss of physical vision, only to find that she had instead gained the ability of foresight. She had many premonitions of a dark world centuries into the future. These visions haunted her, until she began to record them in what is known today as Destiny's Diaries."

"I think I've heard of these Diaries before," Trask said in a whisper. "Everyone thought they were just a myth!"

"For some reason," Summers continued, "the more she wrote into that small notebook, the less she was plagued by her gift. One day, the visions faded altogether. But before she died, Destiny traveled throughout the world, scattering the pages of her diaries, afraid that the force behind the evil in her dreams would take advantage of the knowledge they contained. Some believe that force is Apocalypse. We also believe that the secret to defeating Apocalypse is scattered across the globe in those pages." Rachel looked up. "We have to find those pages."

"You're out of your mind. How are we going to search the entire globe for a few small pieces of paper?"

Summers grinned. "I'm confident and ingenious; that combination is always mistaken for insanity."

But Sanctity didn't seem amused. She was slowly coming out of her sleeping bag. "Answer the question," she snapped.

Summers sobered. "We're going to build an army."

"An army?" Tonya repeated in disbelief. "And where are you going to find soldiers? There are hardly any living creatures left who don't serve Apocalypse. And the rest of us are merely running for our lives—you expect us to stand up to them? That is suicide."

"I'm going to start recruiting here."

Tonya's eyes grew even wider. "You're not serious?" Rachel nodded again. "You do realize," Sanctity asked, "that most of these girls are cowards and whores, who'll do anything to save their own skin? This is the last place you'll ever find soldiers."

"But if I _could_ recruit them," Rachel said, "will you help me?"

The other teenager was also staring into the fire. Finally, she gave her a defeated look, saying, "Let me think about it." When her friend's face returned to a grin, Trask hastily added, "I'm not saying 'yes'."

Summers simply answered, "You're not saying 'no', either."


	22. A Dozen Celestial Warriors

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanx4reading, you rock! Thanks for the inspiration (though I'm sorry it took forever; it took work incorporating themes and rhymes and events and characters for the verses.) The excerpt from Destiny's Diaries is a lot like the ones form the comics, but, alas, it's not genuine. I made it up. And, I'm sorry, but, I'm in LOVE with the whole idea of the 12, so I reinvented it. The real 12 from the comics is really, really lame and random. It is: Xavier, Cyclops, Phoenix, Cable, Magneto, Polaris, Storm, Iceman, Sunfire, Mikhail, Bishop, and Colossus. Lastly, if you haven't read Origin, James Howlett is Logan/Wolverine's real name.

241 timeline

02-11-4130

(uncharted area of modern-day) Slovenia

A harsh, cold wind bit into the earth. Each time another gust hit a sloping hillside, a white sheet of snow rose into the air like dust. The deserted land had an aura as cruel as its environment. But even crueler were the living conditions of 10,784 nomads that had settled in the hills to rest out a deadly blizzard. This mobile town, which consisted solely of mutants, began 2 centuries ago as a sisterhood of 400, and steadily grew into a cutl-like army, known by few as the Clan Asakani.

The Clan was nestled into a valley, sheltered and hidden by an elaborate telekinetic dome. Thanks to the handiwork of several Asakani gifted with the ability to manipulate weather, the camp looked like a peaceful meadow. However, there were no animals thriving in this ecosystem, and the people were beginning to starve. And this was the message that Mother Asakani had heard several times, in the early morning of another long day.

Godfather Julius, the spry lead of Unit 51, was making the same complaint as many before him. "Our Herders have tried, numerous times, to beckon game from outside the dome," he was saying, as he ran a hand through his slick, blonde hair. "But, alas, we've only met a few birds, lost on the migration south." Julius, equipped with a thin, racer's body, and wisdom beyond his 40 years, had long ago earned Mother Asakani's respect. Yet, today, of all days, she did not want to tend to his trivial problems.

"Fine," she sighed after a few moments' wandering thought. "Your provisions will be replenished by nightfall." Julius gave a gracious nod and left quickly, sensing one of her irksome moods. Mother Asakani turned to the Council of Elders squatted around the table before her. "Get out," were her only words. Though they'd prefer to hear the rest of the Godfathers, the old women didn't argue, but left with grumbles quietly escaping their lips.

Mother Asakani, who had been called Rachel Summers, the Hound, Phoenix, and countless other names in lifetimes before, was a completely different person in the 25th century. Her body remained lean and tough, her eyes bright green and alert, her hair scarlet and thick. Nonetheless, her soul had changed. The heavy burden of over 10,000 lives had deadened her sense of humor. An infinite sea of warfare had drowned her passion for life. She may have appeared to be a 20-something athlete, but she was, in actuality, a 1,000-year old warrior queen, losing the biggest battle of her life.

But one thing kept her going—the quest for the Diaries that would bring joy to her world once more. Mother Asakani had brought her Clan to a winter wasteland in search of 1 of its pages. And, rather than praise her intuitive tactics, the very people she tried to save kept complaining that their lives were too hard.

Suddenly, as if to nullify her annoyances, the protective dome over her head was breached by 2 familiar psychic presences. Mother Asakani's mind relaxes in relief. Jaffe and Kahira, her best Hunters, had returned with good news.

* * *

The Clan Asakani now had more than 200 pages of the Destiny Diaries in their possession. Nonetheless, its verses were extremely ambiguous, and no one was really certain of all the answers it contained. The major reoccurring theme, however, was that of a band of vigilantes called, quite simply, The 12. Destiny foretold that these 12 mutants, when combined into a single fighting force, would be Apocalypse's undoing. Unfortunately, Apocalypse had discovered this truth himself, and was now searching for the 12, in order to manipulate their unique power into a fuel source for immortality. The result was constant competition for the Diaries, in order to find the identity of The 12, and a desperate battle to recruit them, once their identities were known. Now, as all of the Asakani Godfathers and Elders convened under a single cramped tent, a rumor began to travel that the search was over. They had found the page revealing the secrets of mysterious Number 12, The Chosen One.

Sanctity, the eldest of the Elders, and second in command to Mother Asakani, got off her knees and went to the center of the tent, signaling that the reading would begin. The crowd fell quiet. None of them had ever witnessed a prophesy before, as the last page was found more than 80 years ago.

Sanctity took from her heavy cloak a single torn and yellowed page. She uncurled it to reveal a blank piece of paper, and addressed the large fire before her. "This communal has gathered to decode the prophesies of the Destiny's Diaries. We now know of The Oracle, also known as Charles Xaiver, who saved the innocent. We know of The Titan, also known as Scott Summers, who saved those who ran. We know of The Child of Light and Darkness, also known as Jean Grey, who saved the celestial beings. We know of The Goddess, also known as Ororo Munroe, who saved those forgotten. We know of The Samauri, also known as James Howlett, who saved the dead. We know of The Renaissance Man, also known as Henry McCoy, who saved those who sought the answer. We know of The Sacred Messenger, also known as Warren Worthington III, who saved those who strayed from the path. We know of The Exorcist, also known as Bishop M., who saved the lost. We know of The Widow Slave, also known as Lilandra Neramani, who saved those who prayed from afar. We know of The Vengeful Prisoner, also known as Eric Leshner, who saved the captives. We know of The Child of Light and Darkness, also known as Rachel Summers, who saved those who took a stand. We wish to know of the Chosen One, who saved humanity."

She held the page out from her body with both hands, facing the ground, and the fire below. She paused, allowing the crowd's excitement to grow. Then, winking one of her yellowing eyes across the room at Mother Asakani, she dropped the paper directly into the fire.

The tent exploded with surprise, and a few Godfathers rushed forward to save the heirloom. But, just as they did, the fire became a black mist, and light burst forth from it to shine upon the canvas wall. The words were bright, almost irredescent, words, exactly like those that had come from the M'Kraan Crystal in Jean Grey's bedroom. The cry of alarm that had resounded amongst them fell into an awed hush. Mother Asakani, who had seen this many times, was not trying to read the brilliant light, but bracing herself for what she knew to come next. A rushing, booming noise burst out into the circle. It was composed of several voices, all reading the verses written above.

"Spawn of the Titan and the Child,

He was Born the First Day of Spring

Heir to his Hallowed Fate

To Save the Innocent, to Slay the King

"His Womb lay Hidden from all

In the Center of the Universe

Yet, in faith, Destiny led Him

To the Medieval Land so Cursed

"There he Shall be Reared

By a Mother he has Twice Known

Until his Time has come

To Defend what will become His Home

"Then, when all Hope is Lost,

He shall find himself The Center once more,

As a Dozen Celestial Warriors

Charge into the Battle to End All War

"And the Children of the Dark Ages

Will Sing Praises into the Night

But the Chosen One must Return

To his Birthplace, to his Birthright"

As the roar of Destiny's prophesy died down, the tent was trapped into a thick, stagnant silence. A hundred dark heads snapped toward Mother Asakani, wide eyes waiting expectantly. She glanced at Sanctity, but her faithful friend simply watched her carefully, before hesitantly asking, "Is it you?"

She didn't understand. "Is what me?"

"The Chosen One."

Mother Asakani almost laughed, but was surprised to see that the others were taking this question very seriously. She sobered. "No, my children, I am not the Chosen One. I am the second Child of Light and Darkness. I am the one destined to gather the pages and prepare soldiers for the War."

A small Godfather in the front row spoke up. "But the page said that The Chosen One would 'charge into the Battle to End All War.' It said that he'd be the center of the charge. That would be like a general, wouldn't it?" Several around him nodded.

"And what about 'returning to his birthplace'?" asked a stocky Godfather from his left. "You came from a land far away, in the center of the universe. What was that called...the Nucleus or something?"

"The M'Krann Crystal," one of the Elders offered.

"The M'Kraan Crystal is the portal to all realities," Mother Asakani explained, "but it certainly isn't the center of the universe. It's more like a window looking onto everything. Think of it as being on the outside."

Another Godfather, with a potbelly and balding hair, stood respectfully. When he was acknowledged by an Elder, he said, "Listen again to a few of the key words. 'Born', 'child', 'spawn', 'birth', 'heir', 'womb'...This is talking about a child. I might even say it is a newborn baby."

Mother Asakani was taken aback. She hadn't even paid attention to the words of the verses. She glanced back at the lights shining against the canvas. "And look," she pointed out, "Born the first day of spring."

Sanctity murmured, "Mother Asakani was born in summer."

Godfather Julius stood from the back. "But the Titan and the Child were your parents. You are the daughter of Scott Summers and Jean Grey!"

A picture flew into Mother Asakani's mind, almost as if thrown from the man's mouth. She saw the birth of her brother, a helpless, screaming, beautiful newborn. She felt so stupid to not have thought of it before. With a smile, she looked to her children and said, "Yes, but my parents had another child. A baby boy, born on March 21, in Mainstream Earth."


	23. Twist of Fate

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The comics are extremely ambiguous about Stryfe; I think you only see him as a baby, like once, in the entire series. So, most of this is coming from me. Enjoy.

Nathan Asakani'son had never seen anything like the "voole". It was round, but in a long kind of way, with a blue line going through it that grew and shrank, almost like it was alive. The "voole" was very small, small enough to fit into his palm. But, for some reason, everyone held it like it was big and heavy. Mother had been staring at it for a really long time, and every so often, she would turn to gaze at him with a look in her eyes. It wasn't a look that said, "No," or a look that said, "Be careful." No matter how hard he tried, Asakani'son couldn't figure out what Mother's eyes were saying.

She could tell he was trying to read her mind. She could feel him there, staring into her eyes, right beneath her knees, even though she knew he was sitting yards away from her toes. She turned toward him and forced a tight smile. For a moment, the 3 year-old boy looked disappointed that she wouldn't allow him inside her head. Then he was distracted, when his twin gave a squeal of delight. Asakani'son followed, as his brother chased a rolling ball down a sandy dune. Mother Asakani returned to the vial in her hands, and to the thoughts that had been haunting her.

The past 3 years had been amazingly intense and uncertain. Upon discovering the identity of Destiny's 12, the Clan Asakani had found itself in the midst of an uproar. Everyone knew Nathan Summers to be the first recorded host of a deadly Techno-organic Virus, which mutated the host's DNA into a computer program designed to attack the X-Gene. Surely, some argued, the Chosen One couldn't be a feeble infant, with a maximum life expectancy of 16 years! But Mother Asakani, backed by every 1 of the Elders, insisted that Destiny's prophesy would come true. So, 2 Hunters were sent to Mainstream Earth, where they found Nathan, and took him to his new home.

The controversy didn't end there. Young Nathan showed no signs of illness or weakness. In fact, he was beginning to develop a very primitive level of telepathy. Thus, it was concluded that he would contract the virus later in life. For this reason, many Asakani pushed the Council of Elders to preserve a piece of the baby's DNA, in order to make "back-up clones", should he become infected before he could fight Apocalypse. Mother Asakani despised the idea of playing god with a human being's genes, especially in order to make an army of objectified clones. But, after weeks of unceasing squandering, she conceded to make a single genetic copy. This copy was named Nathan Asakani'son, and, though no one thought it possible, became Nathan Dayspring's twin, rather than just his clone. Everyone fell in love with Asakani'son, and treated him as Nathan's equal. For a while, Mother Asakani had convinced herself that she'd made the right choice, in creating him.

However, she began to question herself, when Hunters snuck into Apocalypse's base, to find thousands of vials of the infamous Techno Virus in his lab. Now she knew. Nathan would be the first to contract the disease, because it didn't originate in M.E. as an instrument for genocide. It originated here, in the Dark Age of Mutants, as an instrument to kill the only person capable of saving the human race. And the virus may have never been invented, had she allowed Nathan to be raised in his birthplace, until his time had come to fight Apocalypse. It was because of her that he would suffer such pain. It was because of her that the mutant race would meet near annihilation in realities all across the galaxy. And now she faced the prospect of losing both her boys. There were now 2 victims, and, should 1 be able to fight the disease, they would have to watch their brother, whom they loved most in this world, die before their eyes.

"They are growing so fast."

Mother Asakani turned to find Sanctity watching the children over her shoulder. "They're amazing," she replied.

The Elder sat beside her friend, folding her legs beneath her. She gave her a small pat on the knee, and said, "Things are not so bad as they may seem." Mother Asakani threw her a sarcastic look. "Truly, now," Trask retorted. "Your boys are playing in the sand, surrounded by thousands of loved ones, who would die for them in an instant! They have each other. They have you. They know nothing of fear, nor hunger, nor hostility. Their lives are fulfilling, and they are happy!"

Looking at the 2 figures tumbling over each other, Mother Asakani sighed. "Yes, Tonya, they are happy. For now. But I've ruined them."

The old woman looked thoughtful for a moment or so. "Okay, if you insist on being the martyr, we'll do it your way. Let's look at the worst-case scenario. Say they do contract the Techno Virus, both of them. They will experience a lot of pain, I understand that much. They will die at a very young age, as well. But they will still have everything else I just described. They will still be happy."

"No, Tonya!" Mother Asakani shouted. "You would be happy! You don't need anything to have joy, but they do. They are just normal children; they can't withstand what you can. They'd be miserable."

Trask smiled grimly. "No, Mother. You would be miserable."

"And what of the Clan? What about the human race? Nathan is supposed to become the Chosen One."

"Oh, listen to you!" Sanctity was becoming irritated. "You knew he would become the first host long before you knew why. You didn't doubt him then, so why now?" Mother Asakani looked into the horizon, a bit ashamed. How was she being lectured by a woman half her age? Wasn't she supposed to be the wise Mother of her Clan? Sanctity placed an arm around her shoulder. "If Nathan gets the Techno Virus, it will be destined; it will not be a mistake. And look around you. The Clan Asakani is thriving, happy and healthy, and strong. Things are not so bad, Apocalypse or no Apocalypse." Mother Asakani felt her shoulders relax slightly. Maybe the crazy woman was right.

Suddenly, a shrill cry burst through the air, from over the dunes. Mother Asakani was off her feet in an instant, and flying toward the sound of the voice. The sight that met her eyes was her worst fear. Nathan was lying face down in the dirt, blood seeping from his skull. And Asakani'son was nowhere to be seen.


	24. Cable, The Chosen One

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Again, sorry for the tardiness.

Nathan was on fire tonight! In less than twelve hours, he'd managed to defeat an army of sentinels, rescue dozens of helpless captives, withstand an extremely potent tranquilizer/hallucinogen, break free of a fatal psychic hold, survive a wide spectrum of natural disasters, fight off homeless cannibals, and escape a torture chamber specifically designed for his weaknesses, all while hauling a 60-pound tank of highly flammable, toxic gasses over his shoulder.

But his mission was still far from over. Truth be told, all this wasn't even a warm-up to his task ahead. Now Summers stood gazing at a vast blanket of rolling, foaming waves, his chest tight and his mind reeling. _The ocean?_ He looked back at the smoldering rubble of his would-be prison. There was no way back; he couldn't have made a wrong turn, but this was a dead end. Nathan started at the incoming tide. _Can Apocalypse fly,_ he wondered. As he sat plotting, he noticed the water lapping at his feet change slightly. It was coming faster, in fuller, choppier waves, and there was a sound, like thunder, rising from the sea. He looked up.

Nathan had seen his enemy in a variety of sizes, from human proportions to the height of a skyscraper, but today, he had outdone himself. Apocalypse was rising out of the sea in a slow, menacing manner that reminded Summers of a Godzilla movie, his body mass equal to that of a space shuttle.

The cyborg looked at the miniscule teenager from his full height and gave a satisfied snicker. "So, young man, you have come to fulfull your destiny. Well, I've been waiting over a century to see what you've got. Don't disappoint me."

Summers merely returned the sneer. Without a word, he reached into his pocket and pulled a long device that resembled an ice pick. He could see two gigantic eyes watching him, calculating his next move, but he was way too fast for his adversary. In one quick movement, he pressed a tiny button on his uniform, dematerializing himself, and rammed the stake into the tank at his feet. The moment the rod pierced that thin, metal sheath, the tank burst forward. Propelled by its toxic contents, it spun in four wild circles, each getting exponentially larger, until it flew into the ocean and made contact with the robot's leg.

Apocalypse cried out, just before bursting into flames. As his remains fell into the shoreline, Nathan Summers found himself feeling eerily incomplete. Maybe it was the sudden thickening silence in the wake of such a battle, but it seemed that his life's work had come too easily. As if to answer his confused thought, as voice sparked from behind him.

"Some Chosen One," Apocalypse sighed. Nathan turned just in time to catch sight of him, barely larger than himself now, and aiming a huge gun on his shoulder. Hot metal seared his skin, and he tried to barrel roll away.

But he could not move. In a glaring flash of light, the holographic world around him disappeared. He collapsed onto a dusty desert floor, clutching a fresh bullet wound on his shoulder, and hung his head in frustration.

Mother Asakani pulled out of her little brother's mind and knelt beside him. She laid a comforting hand upon his other shoulder, but he brushed it away and spat at the dirt beneath him angrily. Slowly, he rose to his feet and turned to face her, a look of defeat in his eyes. "It's too much," he said.

She gazed up at him wonderingly. "What do you mean?"

"I can't do it, okay? Every time I think I'm going to beat him, I get beaten worse than before." His eyes shifted nervously, and then he said lamely, "I give up."

"You give up?!" She was incredulous. "And what about your people? Hell, what about all humanity? Do you give up on that, too?"

"Look, I'm not the Chosen One you think I am! The prophesy was wrong."

She stood with amazing speed and slapped Nathan across the face, hard. "Don't you dare!"

Nathan stumbled back a few paces, holding his face. She may have been over 1,000 years old, but Mother Asakani still had her youth, and her strength. Her hair had never grown white and thin, her eyes never became gray and misty, like Sanctity's. Her arms and legs were still taught with muscle, and her powers had never faltered, not even for a moment. Nathan often found it difficult to remember that she was older than him.

Nathan Charles Christopher Summers was now 17 years old, and already a grown man. There was no doubt that he was his father's son—he had a head of thick, brown hair, a tall, muscular frame, and amazing athletic agility and speed. But he also carried an unspeakable burden. On that fateful day, when Asakani'son had been taken from them, Nathan was infected with the Techno virus. The Dark Sisterhood, an army of mutants trained to fight Clan Asakani, had injected the virus into his bloodstream, stolen his brother, and then gave Mother Asakani a choice—save Dayspring or save Asakani'son. Mother Asakani chose Nathan, even though she knew he wasn't expected to make it past puberty.

But together, they had fought the virus. With Mother's help, Summers went through weekly physical therapy sessions, in which she would train him to fight the computer program in his body, with the aid of her telekinesis. After years of training, Nathan was able to use his telekinesis and telepathy, though both would cause an outbreak. Therefore, he reserved his abilities for emergencies and usually relied upon his high-tech uniform and weapons in battle. Nonetheless, he was an uncanny soldier. And Mother Asakani had noticed. Though she never told him, she had seen him grow into a man; she'd seen him become more than anyone thought possible.

Mother Asakani put her arms around her little brother, and forced him to the ground. "You are the Chosen One, Nathan. And you know it. You're just frustrated."

He nodded. "Every single training session I've lost. I've been training for over 10 years, and I haven't beaten him, not once. And that's just your Danger Room rip-off hologram Apocalypse. That's not even the real thing. What if I go up against him, thinking I'm ready, and I die? What will happen to everyone else?"

She smiled at him maliciously. "You're never going to think you're ready, so you don't have to worry about that." He threw her an evil eye, and she chuckled. "Nathan, when you were first infected, Sanctity told me something. She said, 'If Nathan gets the Techno Virus, it will be destined; it will not be a mistake.' You never know, maybe the reason you are the Chosen One is that only a computer can beat a computer."

He rolled his eyes. "Great, now I'm not even human." She could see him smiling behind his sarcasm. "I'm Dayspring—the incredible living computer. Maybe I'll catch up with Spiderman, and we can join the circus together."

"Cable."

"What?"

"Cable," Mother Asakani repeated. "You're Cable, the incredible living computer." He looked confused, and she explained, "When you grow up, you don't call yourself Nathan or Dayspring, you call yourself Cable. At least you did when I knew you."

She could see that he was wondering how they'd met, and what kind of adventures they'd had, but he didn't ask her any of the 100 questions flying through his mind. He just flashed her a smile and asked, "So now I'm grown up?"

"Yes, you are." Nathan pulled his arm from around his sister's shoulders and smacked a kiss onto her forehead, before standing and heading off to his tent.

Mother Asakani sat thinking for a long while after he left. She felt a tide of change coming. She wasn't sure what it was, or if it would even be good change, but she knew it would be strong and fast. The more she thought of Dayspring growing up, the more she realized that he didn't need her anymore. Oh, sure, he thought he needed her. When she dipped into the depths of his psyche she could see herself there, clearly still his "mother". But she knew. He didn't need his all-powerful, all-consuming Mother Asakani anymore.

In the wake of these slightly disturbing thoughts, she felt a strong sense of nostalgia. She pondered, for hours it seemed, about Asakani'son. Mother had never told anyone what happened the day her other son was taken away. She explained it away as a choice between Asakani'son and Dayspring, which, of course, enraged many of the Clan. Why had she chosen the infected boy? Asakani'son was always the stronger of the two, and he was perfectly healthy.

In truth, Mother Asakani could have saved both children without so much as a sweat of her brow. But, as she ran to rescue the kidnapped baby, the Phoenix Force sent her a very clear message: Asakani'son belongs to Apocalypse. She didn't understand quite what this meant, but she knew, from the force of her convictions, that she had to heed Phoenix's warning, or Nathan Dayspring would suffer. Somehow she knew that his life was on the line. So, she allowed the Dark Sisterhood to take the boy away, and focused on nursing the Chosen One.

But, every day since then, she'd longed to catch a glimpse of Asakani'son. She just wanted to make sure that he was happy, that he was healthy, that he was alive. The Phoenix Force wouldn't allow it. In all her time with the Phoenix, she'd never known boundaries. She was all-powerful, wasn't she? This sparked a lot of anger and resentment within her, and she began to hate the Phoenix Force. She only held onto its remnants in order to train Nathan.

But now that he didn't need her…

Mother Asakani stood and rose into the air, slowly, but steadily. She was gathering all of her courage, readying herself for something she never saw herself doing. Did she dare let go of her lifeforce? She kept rising, until she was at the very rim of the earth's atmosphere, too far from the Clan campsite to hurt anyone. She closed her eyes, and mounted all of her strength. Then, in a single second, she expelled every bit of the Phoenix Force from her body. An enormous burst of telekinesis flew from her, at least three miles in diameter. Several lightning rods came zig-zagging through the air from below her feet, to pierce her body. She felt herself turning into fire, and then ice, then stone, fire again, glass, metal, fire… During her metamorphosis, her body continued to excrete countless forces, from telekinesis, to laser beams, to spears and knives, to electromagnetic waves. It seemed an eternity.

And then she realized that she was falling. She fell for miles, gaining speed, her body becoming icy as it passed through the clouds. She could see the ground now, coming faster and faster. Finally, just 15 feet from the ground, she caught herself. She didn't feel any connection with the Phoenix Force as she telekinetically lowered herself to the ground. When her feet touched the ground, she released, at felt a slight headache rearing from the back of her brain.

She focused upon a campfire nearby, enclosing it in a TK shield. The shield became smaller, and smaller, until it suffocated the flame, and reduced it to embers. Lifting her TK, he tried, concentrating hard, to light the fire again. But flame of the Phoenix Force had left her. She was all Rachel Summers, no Phoenix.

Mother Asakani went into her own tent, and stood before her mirror. Just as she thought, her hair had thinned into a scraggly, white mess. Her skin was wrinkled, worn, and fragile. Her muscles were all but gone. But she had never felt so alive, so free.


	25. The Battle to End All War

In her long life, Mother Asakani had experienced several moments when time stood still. The few mutants she knew who possessed some form of time control confirmed that they too could feel the space-time continuum come to a stand-still in moments of great consequence, that somehow matter seemed to become stagnant and lose all ability for catalyst when it was most needed. This was one of those moments.

Apocalypse stood on the base of a mountain, overlooking a valley of tiny, swarming figures in the midst of battle. His metallic face wore a look of shock. One fist was clenched around a three-foot long plasma rifle, while the other grasped a piece of yellowed, tattered, partially burnt parchment. Cable ascended the hillside swiftly and trained his right arm upon his enemy. The robot glanced over his shoulder at him unconcernedly and held up the page so that Cable caught the glimpse of a sketch emblazoned in gold, as if the picture itself were made of light. It depicted a very familiar young man with long hair, whose right eye burst with solar energy.

"This has all been foretold, young mortal," said En Saba Nur.

Cable lowered the barrel of his arm slightly to look at the paper. "Is that a page of Destiny's Diaries?" he asked, though of course he knew the answer. Written word had been abolished a long time ago, and the Diaries were the only parchment in existence today.

Apocalypse read, "And the Children of the Dark Ages will sing praises into the night, but the Chosen One must return to his birthplace, to his birthright." He turned to face Cable. "Not many know that this is the very last page the mutant known as Destiny wrote in her famous diaries. Her poignant story ends with a king sailing off into the horizon and a victorious hero returning to his homeland. But her tale is short-sighted. This is not the end of our story." He threw the parchment to the ground. "What will become of your dear 'children' when you leave their world, and I return?"

Nathan Summers furrowed his brows but bit back the insults that rose in his mind. "You may be immortal, Apocalypse, but I am eternal. Mother Asakani will bring me back a thousand times, if she needs to, to put an end to any pathetic attempt you make at regaining reign over this land."

"Your sister is on her deathbed."

Mother Asakani winced at the realization that Apocalypse could feel her psychic presence, watching them from her encampment 5 miles away. Her attendant misunderstood the sound and offered her a glass of water, which she pushed away impatiently. Cable was speaking again.

"Enough of this childish talk, Apocalypse!" He trained his gun again, and the robot threw his head back in an enormous roar.

The battle below ceased almost instantly. Cyclops grabbed Jean Grey's arm and pointed at the mountain base. "He's facing Apocalypse alone! He said we'd fight him as twelve. Is he insane!"

Jean Grey hugged her husband's waist and said, "We fought the battle as 12. But this is another fight altogether. This is his fight." Stryfe lowered his arm, which was trained upon their backs, and stepped beside his biological father. He still hated the man, but at this moment, their skirmish was moot. He watched the two figures fire their weapons and he held his breath as both bodies shook the plasma away like dust and charged.

Mother Asakani couldn't watch the battle. She pulled away from the mountain, back into her small tent, and felt her temples throb from the effort. Her spirit was pulling away from her body, as water slips through a strainer, leaving only limp spaghetti behind. No! Not now. I need two more minutes! Clenching her teeth through the pain, she sped time forward, past the half-hour battle between Apocalypse and Cable, past the slow separation between the robot's forces and the Clan Asakani, past the moment went the Sentinels and the army of mutants below realized their master was losing the battle and ran into the distance, until she heard cries of praise thrown into the air.

Asakani was dancing in the valley, hugging and kissing each other, almost silly with exuberance. But the remaining 10 members of the 12 were clumped together in a solemn circle, watching the end of an arduous battle. Cable held Apocalypse in a telekinetic hold. The robot was immortal, but he tired, and he could no longer fight off his adversary's grip. He surrendered. As Cable approached, small skin cells upon his neck and face mutated into titanium chips. The use of TK was straining his immune system and the Techno Virus was taking over his body. But there was fight in him still. He forced Apocalypse's face to the ground with his foot and extended the gun of his armor against his temple.

"Let's save the dramatics, Cable," Apocalypse spat. "Your pistol is no more a threat to me than your foot. Release me, so that I can make my walk of defeat into the desert."

Reluctantly, Cable kicked the face away and lifted his telekinetic hold. Apocalypse got to his knees, then stood, and threw his nemesis a self-satisfied look. "I will return, you must know that," he stated. It wasn't a question.

Cable gave a short nod. "And I will always be here, waiting for you, when you do. Now get out of my sight."

Stryfe came forward and led Apocalypse away into the sunset. Cheers from the Asakani filled the air again, and they were so loud that none of her teammates heard Jean Grey say, "We need to get back to the camp. Now."

But the words had barely escaped her lips when she felt herself and her companions cupped in a telekinetic shield and thrown into the atmosphere above. They were traveling faster than light, past galaxies and stars, dematerialized fragments of dust and thought. And with a crash of surprise, found themselves upon the ground in an office of oak and leather. They were back at the X-Mansion in M.E.

Wolverine was the first to jump up. "What the hell was that?"

"Rachel," Jean said. "She's gone." She turned to look at Cable, but he had stomped out of the room without a word to any of them.

Rachel Summers soared through the timestream clumsily, dragging 11 mutants behind her with difficulty. When she saw the jade green mass of light that she knew to be Mainstream Earth, she threw her cargo aside and pressed on as fast as she could. She could feel herself faltering, failing with every minute. But she wouldn't stop. She'd go out with a bang. She circled around until she came back to M.E., into the green glow.

She saw the universe come into focus, and spotted the Milky Way. She sped past the planets without concern, taking no notice of Saturn, Mars, Earth, or Mercury as they brushed her force-stream in passing. She felt the heat of the sun pressing on her skin. The light was so bright that it pierced her blindness, and forced white into every black corner of her sight. The flames licked her body. Her hair and clothes evaporated instantaneously and her flesh seemed to melt like wax. She released any telekinesis she still retained and felt herself fall into a sea of lava.

The last thing she remembered was the light.


End file.
